Afloat for 2021 at last!

This Spring we made visits to Antipole to complete fitting out – especially cleaning up after all the work done over the long time ashore. This has included restoring the woodwork – it looks lovely again.

We have been anticipating a house move and this was agreed in late October. Plenty of time to complete this before the 2021 sailing season – or so we thought. The process has dragged on interminably until it began to look like it would clash with the sailing season and easing of Covid-19 restrictions. We decided to launch Antipole anyway – priorities!

And so, after what has seemed a long time out of the water, Antipole was launched on 4th May. It was lovely to be afloat again. Ashore she is dead weight. Afloat she becomes alive again. The next day we moved downriver to set up our mooring. It was really good to be back amongst the reedbeds after an absence of five years.

We have two technical problems to resolve:

• The centre plate is stiff within its guides and has to be winched down and up again. Tony knows what has to be done as he had to do this when we were in Estonia and it can be done on the water but needs mains electricity.
• The resuscitation of the Rudder Reference Unit seems not to have lasted and it needs replacing.

In an extraordinary coincidence, on the day after we launched and just as we were setting up our mooring, the house purchase came good. The contract was finally exchanged and completed simultaneously. Given this and the technical issues to be resolved, we abandoned plans to have a shakedown sail and have left Antipole on her mooring to attend to our house move.

We are somewhat split between settling into our new home ashore and attending to our home afloat. We will update you in due course.