Well it's been a while, and we would love to say we've been working hard and made loads of progress with the boat. However...... don't know about the rest of the country but Summer seems to have passed Roa Island by completely, which has severely limited the amount of work Scott has been able to do. He keeps pottering doing things he can just abandon at a moments notice when the heavens open!
We have however had the whole car fiasco to keep us entertained. Scott decided his beloved BMW just had to go, rising fuel costs and really it just wasn't practical for our new life. It took a while and we didn't get anywhere near the car's true value but finally she was sold.
The next mission then was to get a new car. Scott trawled through E bay and finally settled on a Mitsubishi Shogun, ideal car for our purposes, only problem was it was in Thatcham, Berkshire. Scott didn't view this as a problem as he has a friend, Hi Ken, in Thatcham whom for unknown reasons he'd been unable to contact for a few weeks. So Scott decided, buy this car, go to pick it up, find Ken at the same time and kidnap him to bring him back here for a few days. Great plan!
So early one Tuesday Morning Scott set off in a pink taxi to the train station - the buses from here are carefully timed so that you can arrive to see your train pulling out of the station - and set off on what was to be an epic journey.
It was my day off so me and Saff decided to go swimming, do a bit of shopping and come back after the tide, another great plan! I was quite concerned about securing the boat up as that's normally Scott's job so we set off with plenty of time to make sure everything was locked up and the ladder secure. This part of the mission wasn't nearly so complicated as I'd imagined so we had time to pop to the cafe on Roa Island before our bus. We went out at the appointed time to get the bus, only to discover (when it didn't turn up) we were actually an hour early! In my concern to secure everything properly I'd panicked and made us leave far earlier than we needed to. We ended up in Clarkes for a drink (at 10.30am) and finally got the bus. Should have realised the day wasn't going according to plan! Arrived at the swimming baths only to find it was shut that day, so we were faced with four or five hours wandering aimlessly around town carrying our swimming bag, or a mad dash round the supermarket, taxi back and home before the tide. We opted for the mad dash and got back before the tide. I got really brave and climbed up onto the roof to set the wind generator going - then later had to go back up to stop it so I could start the other generator.
Scott's day wasn't going according to plan either.
"Wrong type of leaves on the track" caused train delays, he missed connections and ended up being late. Things then began to look up for a while, Scott went round to Ken's house, which Ken wasn't living in at the time due to work being carried out to repair flood damage, but miraculously a few minutes later Ken turned up at the house. So Scott decided to stay the night at Ken's and drive back the next morning, kidnapping Ken in the process.
So me and Saff spent our first night on Vita Nova without Scott.
It turned out Scott couldn't get hold of Ken because he'd managed to change the phone number on his mobile.
On the Wednesday, the plan was Scott and Ken would leave early to get back in time for me to go to work. Scott filled the new car with petrol ready for the journey back, so far so good, for about 6 miles...........then the gear box blew up! About 9 in the morning I was woken by Saff to say dad had been on the phone. I had to phone work and say I couldn't go in that night because the gear box on the car had blown up and Scott couldn't get back, a story which through the wonder of Chinese Whispers resulted in me getting texts from work mates going "are you all alright, heard the car blew up!" Scott and Ken then spent the day sitting in the car at the side of the road in pouring rain waiting for someone to rescue them, which didn't happen till about 6 in the evening. Scott spent another night at Ken's, by complete coincidence it was Ken's birthday so they spent the night drinking Southern Comfort, fate works in mysterious ways! And Scott set off on the train the next morning, leaving the car with the ex owner to sort out. Scott was supposed to arrive back about 3 so me and Saff set of to meet him from the train so that I could hand Saff over and go to work. More leaves on the track, more delays, I had to phone work and tell them I'd be late. Scott finally made it back about 5 so I got to work about 5.15, an hour and a quarter late.
So the car, plus tax, plus train fares we ended up £600 worse off with no car to show for it, pretty expensive way to visit Ken on his birthday!
Thanks go to Ken and Karen for once again taking Scott in and sorting him out, Karen even lent him socks, he'd gone prepared to come straight back!
Eventually we got our money back and the search began for another car.
Located in Wales, a Daihatsu Sportrak, it was a Thursday this time, Scott took Saff with him on the train so that I could go to work as normal. As normal things didn't go according to plan, the usual train delays - why they set out timetables so you can plan your route to be somewhere at a particular time is quite beyond us. When Scott and Saff arrived at Wrexham to be picked up by the owner of the car, it turned out they were at the station at the wrong side of town - the man they were meeting was at the other one. Through a series of miscommunication Scott and Saff set off to the "right" station as the man they were meeting set off to the "wrong" one. Eventually they managed to coordinate their movements and the car was ours.
No major problems with this one - it got them back from Wales! A sticky brake, maybe the car just didn't want to leave it's home town! Then a battery that kept going flat, turned out a wire wasn't connected in the engine, oh and the heater doesn't turn off - but with the summer we're having that's hardly an issue, the windscreen wipers work fine!
On an entirely different subject we changed position recently during high tides and ended up leaning slightly the opposite way to where we had been for a while. Not much of a lean just different, Scott found it slightly disconcerting, and even more so when he discovered some tiny holes in the porthole leading to the bunk room meant that water now gathered there and leaked down when it rained. Scott was out of bed early several days, when the rain started it dripped into the bowl next to his bed and every 5th drip, like Chinese water torture splashed into his face. He couldn't fix the leak until it stopped raining long enough to dry out
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