Ryan
The morning looked innocent. Flat light, gulls acting like they owned the place, chain lying like a good dog. That’s when you do the work—the boring stuff you only notice when it fails. I started at the bow because that’s where the night talks back. Snubber off, fingers on the splice, no heat, no fibres lifted. The fairlead we “sorted” in Lagos was fine, which I decided to believe for exactly one coffee. I walked the chain and read the mud on the links: nice beige, no rocks hiding in there, set was proper last night. Sagres is kind for that—honest sand if you pick your patch under the fort and give it a second look at slack.
Back to the rig. The cape’s little punches can loosen what you thought was settled. Main halyard, a touch of creep; took it out and logged it. Leech line on the jib had crept too—back a whisper so the flutter doesn’t start. Topped off the hydraulic backstay to where the telltales behave and the autopilot stops second-guessing me on a reach. I put a spanner on every turnbuckle I could reach without making a morning of it. Nothing moved, which is the nicest kind of anticlimax.
The outboard sulked after last night’s dinghy run. Flush. New plug, because plugs are cheaper than swearing. It purred like a small liar and then actually kept purring. Bilge: sniff test first (learnt the hard way), then the look. Dry minus the cup we always get after a push. Taste… no, I didn’t. I am older now.
I wrote “Ryan: don’t ignore that topping lift rub, just because it behaved” on the page and closed the notebook like that settled it. It didn’t. I still took a scrap of wet-and-dry to the edge that wanted to start eating rope. Five minutes now or an hour in a place with no shop later. That’s the entire religion.
We moved the hook fifty metres because I didn’t like the angle to the swell. There’s a difference between sleeping and sleeping and not pretending you slept. Reset was clean in six metres, same sand, same smug gulls. Liam did the count from the bow—“five times depth and a bit for your nerves”—and I let him have that line because he earned it last night. If we were trying to be clever we could have ducked round to Baleeira for the shore run and the lee behind the mole, but the gusts slice oddly in there when the northerly remembers itself. I wanted a straight fetch and a quiet boat.
Liam
Small jobs, he says, like any of them feel small when you’re new. I started with the stupid one: the drawer that opens by itself when the boat makes that cape face. I stuck a bit of non-slip in the runner, which is nothing, and then it stopped doing the thing. Easiest win of the month and I will dine out on it until the next problem shows up with a hat and a form to fill.
We hung everything damp on one line like a laundry Christmas. Oilies, the sulky towel, the cockpit cushion that found a puddle when I wasn’t looking. You learn the right way to peg things: two clips, upside down, corners kissing. The fort doesn’t care how you dry your pants but I felt judged anyway.
Ryan had me do the “deck talk” with my hands again. You look like you’re patting a horse, but it sticks in your head better than any checklist. Clevis pins, split rings facing aft, tape tidy not gummy, chafe guards where the rope actually runs, not where you wish it did. The topping lift spot we argued about in Lagos? I’m on his side now. The mark in the varnish is a story you either read today or later with swearing. We sanded the edge and I pretended it was my idea.
Galley got triaged: gimbals fine, kettle base not wobbling anymore because I flattened it with a gentle hammer and an ungentle face. The gas felt lighter than I liked, so I weighed the bottle on the luggage scale because that’s who I am now. Wrote the number on tape. Future me will thank past me or call him names; both are progress.
We did the anchor reset and I got to be bow goblin—hand signals that are not universal but are ours. He trusts me now to count the fall and call the set and not panic when the chain sings before it shuts up. The sand here makes it easy to feel good at this, which I will take. I watched another boat try to be clever with less scope and a braver face. Maybe they sleep better than I do. Maybe they’re nineteen. I am not nineteen. I like the way our chain lies when the breeze decides to change its mind.
By afternoon the list had turned into tea and we sat with the notebook open like a third person at the table. The cape last night felt smaller by then, which is the trick your head plays when nothing broke. I wrote “check the stupid drawer first next blow” because morale is a system too.
Both
We didn’t go ashore. We told ourselves it was because of swell; really it was because the boat felt almost dialed and we wanted to hold that rare feeling where you walk from bow to stern and nothing snags your eye. There’s a rhythm to these days you don’t notice until you get one wrong: fix three little things, move the hook once, put tools away the actual moment you finish, not an hour later. No speeches. No heroics. Tomorrow we move again and something else on the boat will put its hand up. Today it was small. Good. Let it stay small.
