Day off in Bournemouth

No sailing today as I took the opportunity of being at my brother's to beef up the barrel carrier on the board. The repair I'd got done at a Deal bikeshop (a couple of days after departure) had left the barrel support wonky. I am of the personality type that means that had to be sorted. Barrel is now correctly seated and rivets are now of the stronger variety that require herculean effort to pop. Design now simpler. Simpler = better.

I'd also made a decision to ditch the paddle. So far the paddle has been great for camping, a thorough nuisance sailing, and totally hopeless for paddling. I'll be glad to see the back of that piece of excess luggage. I did try paddling when I became becalmed in the Solent a few days ago: I got very hot, wasted a lot of energy and moved not very far. A much more effective tactic if winds are forecast to drop away is to simply stay closer to land. Hope I don't find myself up a particular type of creek regretting the decision to abandon paddle (in a mast breakage situation I will have at least 3 long bits of tube to use as paddles anyway, I am reasoning, with crossed fingers...).

Not being very adept at - or used to much going on in - my Social Media world I have been quite overwhelmed by suddenly being interesting and in demand. Apologies for not posting, replying, texting or phoning back. Needed a bit of downtime today.

New stickers have arrived. Previous version weren't quite the right spec for windsurfing sails but these ones look like they should do the job. Still need to stick them on sail.

I have also picked up a camera (kindly supplied by Olympus). A waterproof shockproof TG-3. So I'll be able to get some more pictures of the interesting bits. To be honest attention and hands are not very available at times when the interesting bits happen, but I'll do my best.

The day has flown by today. I don't feel like I've got 15% of the things done I intended to get done. Life is so much more complex when you stop windsurfing.