Jungle Freedom Fighters

We had a whole day on land in La Palma so rented a car and did a little exploring.

As I write this we are motoring away from La Palma heading for Madeira. The winds will be getting up soon and we should be in Madeira in about 36 hours. This will be our first night passage of this voyage but the winds are predicted to drop to about 12 knots around midnight so hopefully it shouldn’t be too bad.

From the moment we left La Gomera it got pretty bumpy. 20-25knt winds and quite a large Atlantic swell. It didn’t get any better. The winds increased past 26 knots so we put a reef in the mainsail. Then they passed 31 knots and we reduced the gib to 70%. Then they started heading for about 36 knots and the spray was covering us all in sea water and salt. As we approached the East of La Palma we entered the “acceleration zone” and the winds were passing 40 knots.

On the bright side

a) We made it

and

b) A pod of Dolphins kept us company again.

On the not so bright side my sunglasses are now at the bottom of the Atlantic after being blown from my head.

As we rounded the Southern tip of La Palma it was like somebody switched off the wind machine. In a matter of 100m it went from crazy strong winds to absolutely nothing. We had to put the engines on!

After motoring up the West of La Palma we eventually made harbour and had a much needed drink

I arrived in Tenerife on Saturday and met Michal, Tomek and Matka at the airport.

We took a taxi over to the marina and loaded the supplies onto our 40ft Catamaran “Eskimo”. After a full day of travelling an early night was definitely needed.

Next morning, we set sail for La Gomera. Pretty blustery when we first set off but things settled down. Unbelievably we had an escort from a pod of Dolphins on the first leg of our journey.

We finally arrived at La Gomera at about 8pm which was about 8hrs of sailing.

An excellent first day on the adventure and one of the great moments [ apart from the Dolphins of course ] was seating eating a rack of ribs in the middle of the Atlantic.

Fucking finally.

It finally happened.

The big yin got married. How he ever managed that one is a mystery up there with Atlantis, Lord Lucan’s disappearance…and why people drink Carlsberg. But there we are.

I seem to start far too many blog posts with something along the lines of “Due to the ongoing extension” but…due to the ongoing extension I had Neil around doing some groundwork and since he kinda ran out of stuff to do, and I kinda had a load of stone tucked around the back of my office we asked Neil to extend our sail shade area. Partly because we lost our barbecue area due to the extension and partly because the grassy area near the sailshade was an absolute bugger to cut with my ride-on mower.

So now we have a much bigger sail shade space replete with barbecue area and no need to mow it.

Again…as part of the extension work we had to move the power supply for my poo-pump from the house to the garage. Aaron and I ran a bit of armoured cable from the garage and drilled through into the pumping chamber and hooked it up. This chamber is supposed to be relatively clean as the “solids” remain in the first chamber and the liquid transfers into the pumping chamber. However, in reality it’s well minging. It also didn’t help that as we were doing a final test of the system that I caught the pipe that transfers the waste to the soakaway and it fell off. The jubilee clip that had been holding it in place had corroded. So off we went to buy some new jubilee clips and then both of us had our heads down the hole fixing a new one on…whilst Emma sat inside with her friends eating sandwiches and cake. Life just isn’t fair.

As part of the extension work my pristinely beautiful gravel drive was covered in tonnes of earth. I was pretty pissed off with this needless to say. Eventually the soil was moved and was put into the planters with the remainder going into a skip. But it still left crap all over my gravel.

So I took some more of the wood from Oliver’s bed and created a frame into which I inserted some left over chicken wire out of my shed. Now I shovel the dirty gravel onto the frame supported by a wheelbarrow. Leave it for a few days for the soil to dry. Give it a bit of a shake and the soil drops into my wheelbarrow and the clean(er) soil goes into my borders. It’s not perfect, but it’s better.

Now, I’m not saying I have retired and I not saying that I haven’t retired, but one year on from finishing work this is what one has as a celebratory breakfast.

As part of the house extension we made Oli’s room bigger so he had no need of the bunk bed come desk/storage underneath. We took the bed apart and I’ve been making various things with the wood. The latest masterpiece is a couple of coat hooks for the downstairs cloak room. I used a spirit level and everything, although the second one I put up still looks a little wonky.

This particular bad boy, of which I’m quite impressed even though it’s probably a girls belt, was purchased at the Vintage Shop in Ormskirk. Again, I apologise for the flesh.

We finally got around to sanding and varnishing the ex worksurface that is now Oli’s desk. Oli did most of the work with me supervising.

Unusually for any Darren/Oli DIY projects nothing really went wrong. We hade some minor issues with rawl plugs but I think this is because I was using 50yr old rawl plugs from my Grandad which were none standard size. I’ve now ( sadly ) had to throw them away and buy some more modern ones.

One of the many very generous gifts for my 50th birthday from my London Crew was a day of driving classic cars.

I opted to drive a Jaguar e-type

an Aston Martin DB-5

and a Ford Escort Mk1 rally car

It was an excellent day of cars, sunshine and fun

If anyone needs a very talented builder that mostly turns up, drinks tea and eats biscuits….and then leaves again without actually doing any building work then I’ve got just the fella…

Emma was wandering down the Aldi middle aisle and saw a magnetic thing for sticking tools on. Being the wonderful wife that she is – she bought it for me. It sat around in the living room for a couple of months but I finally got around to installing it in my garage and sticking some tools to it. Absolute genius!

Shhh, don’t tell Oli but the Z4 is going up for sale. Oli absolutely insists that I mustn’t sell it, but I want a Tesla…and some space on my drive. It’s got a bit of a dink on the side where I dropped a table frame on it about a week after buying the car – because I’m a dick like that – but other than that it’s in fine working order. It’ll be a shame to see it go but ho hum

When we took down the old rat infested stinky utility room we pulled out a bit of work-surface which was in pretty good condition. I thought we could re-purpose it for something in the future. Turns out it’s going to make a pretty good desk for Oli’s ‘new’ room.

So we sanded it down and we had to borrow Mark’s drill to put the holes in for the desk grommet for the cables.

Next came the time to give it a light varnish so I let Oli take the lead on this bit.

It has a few dinks in it as you can see from the picture above but I think that gives it character and helps us remember where it came from. Plus, he’ll probably just stick a mouse mat over them or something.

Next step – attaching it to his bedroom wall. Eeeek

My old college friend Andy died recently. Terrible news. Far too young and leaving behind a wife and kids. Terribly upsetting.

A few of us travelled down for his funeral.

Then we went out for a curry and beer, it’s what he would have wanted

Phil was also at the funeral but he didn’t come for a curry.

Gordon had covid in this picture – fortunately he didn’t pass it on to everyone which shows that immunisations are good m’kay

A swanky new restaurant opened nearby called Solo. In a similar vein to L’Enclume and Moor Hall. So Emma and I just had to have a visit to celebrate her birthday.

It was a little pricey, probably about £250 for a 5 course taster lunch for two, but then we did also drink two bottles of English Wine which accounted for about £100.

Expensive as it may be – definitely… definitely worth it.

We’ll be returning.

I had to drop my car off in Wigan to get the roof fixed and Daisy needed some hoooman company. So I googled whether or not dogs are welcome on trains [ they are ] and then off we went.

We had a bit of time to kill in Wigan waiting for the train to Parbold so I got a sausage roll for the walk home and a sausage butty to eat then. Daisy, with her constant stare that just bores into your soul had the lions share of the butty.

Then onto the train to Parbold

and then a nice long walk across the fields and back home. We were both properly tired when we got home. Daisy was mostly tired from carrying sticks

After a few days of hanging out with Charlie and James in Manchester the last job before heading home was to add a lick of paint to the skirting boards in the practice room/recording studio.