Last blog post until we return from India!

On Monday I received an email from a boatbuilding friend (Mike Lowson) who lives and works in Aberdeenshire. The photos kinda are self explanatory and these along with Mike's email made me feel wimpish for moaning about the fact that getting to my workshop was impossible because of the snow and that moving out of our rented house in preparation to going to India was proving very challenging.

Here is an excerpt of Mike's email:

"The pictures attached show that boatbuilding in Aberdeenshire in January can be tricky, if not impossible. The current record is -13C inside the workshop. The picture of my greenhouse suggests that my early crop of lettuces might be delayed this year!"

Mike Lowson of Northboats

So, this is my last blog post until I am back in the UK in March. The weather has eased thankfully today which has meant that moving stuff in the van has been easy. The last two days we have dug our way out of our road and into the roads we needed to get to, still its good to exercise those muscles!

If you would like to know what we are upto whilst in India please look at our other blog Our Adventures

Happy Boatbuilding and see you in the Spring.

Cheers

Marc

Oar making

Its been ages since I have been able to get to the workshop! The need to scrape some cash together, Christmas and packing-up the house to go to India for five weeks have just got in the way! Yep, I have no paying boat building work at the moment so I am earning pennies doing some bank Nursing, yep, I am a qualified nurse also, this is handy as I enjoy the practical nursing and you know helping people is a great thing to do.

So, at the weekend I went to the workshop and started making the oars I have been wanting to make since October! It was freezing, but working keeps you warm and it was great working the Sitka Spruce. Unfortunately progress will stop now as I need to mothball the workshop until we get back from India in March. Can't wait to experience Southern India, we are off to Auroville which is near Pondicherry.

The Oars will just have to wait until we get back, but hey, there is no hurry!

Happy New Year to you and your family!

The day dawned bright and cold. "Lets go for a New Year's Day row" I suggested. We had not seen Defiant for at least six weeks and we were missing her. So off we drove to Conyer. We took a flask of coffee and chocolate in various forms. We got out of the nice warm car and wow, it was cold. Actually it was absolutely freezing cold, the wind chill was awesome.

We dutifully walked along the pontoon to say hello to Defiant, we had already made up our minds not to go for a row, the NE that was blowing was just too cold! Still she looked very pretty with snow and ice on her cover. I had a peek under the cover, I always feel anxious about finding her with water inside, happily she was bone dry and as usual looked great!

We went for a brief walk along the creek. The tide was a very high Spring. Loads of water!  On our return to the car the fresh coffee from the thermos tasted great and went a long way to warming our cockles.