THINGS are still going at a snail’s pace here in the dead cold of winter, but they are moving. We are now ready to step the masts: the chainplates have been installed; the masts have been dressed and are ready to go up. What we don’t have is an operational engine, and this is only because our mechanic’s wife is sick in hospital–our thoughts are with you and your family, Billy, and not just because we really, really want our injection pump reinstalled.

In other news, we found out this week that Garmin no longer sells charts compatible with our GPS chartplotter. This isn’t a massive surprise, since it was state-of-the-art about a decade ago. It means that thousands of dollars worth of equipment and spares is so much dead weight, of course, but that’s the nature of modern technology. I’m being disingenuous there, really: it still gives us our latitude and longitude to within about 10 metres at the touch of a button, which Nelson would have given his other arm and his other eye for.

Today we tried to start the Nissan 8hp outboard that drives our tender. This involved me standing for a long period of time in icy water in my sea boots. Don’t worry, I can totally feel my toes again now and everything. Yeah, no it didn’t start. We did stick the lid back together with duck tape though, which was kind of satisfying.

Um. That’s really about it.

Y’know.

For now.