“Drying out”

Help! This is really scarey. I'm sitting in the boat which is leaning backwards at an alarming angle and sideways, as well. We're leaning up against a big concrete wall, with the keel resting, now the tide has gone out, on a concrete slipway. We're tied to some stone benches and a couple of willow trees, with a line from the top of the mast to stop us tipping right over.

“Actually,” says Andy, “it looks like there's quite a lot of zinc left on that anode.”

“Aaagh!” I say. “Is that so?” We've got to sleep at this angle tonight, except that at about maybe 2 o'clock in the morning the back part of the boat will start floating again. By 4 o'clock, we'll be properly afloat again, until early morning, when we'll start bumping on the ground again and lying at an alarming angle. The scariest part is walking from the front of the boat to the back and feeling it seesaw and boink on the ground. I'm going to try and cook a meal, now, but I think the potatoes will all slide to one side of the oven. The other thing is, we won't be able to pump out the toilet. It's going to have to be a bucket!

For the uninitiated, all boats with metal in the water have to have sacrificial anodes made of zinc attached to their bottoms. Thus, the zinc, being lower down the electro-chemical series, dissolves in preference to your boat. It's to do with having different metals in salt water, which actually form a kind of battery. If you want a proper explanation, look on the interweb. Don't ask me. I asked Andy, but I'm not sure he really knows.

Changing the subject, to try and keep my mind off the fact that I'm sliding off the end of the bunk here, we went almond-bashing last Friday. There were about 8 of us who went upriver in our dinghies to a finca owned by an English guy. His almonds haven't been picked for about 10 years, he said. In order to get a better crop, they need to be picked. There's not much of a market for them, apparently, as it's cheaper to make almond essence out of chemicals. Since these chemicals are thought to give you cancer, though, he thinks the market may be coming back. I think he hopes to get organic status and flog them at inflated prices in London.

So, we dragged great big nets and spread them under the trees, then hit the trees with long bamboo poles. Some of the almonds fell into the nets. It was jolly hard work, when you're used to lying around reading detective novels for most of the day, but it was good fun to get out and do some purposeful activity. We all came back with big bags of nuts, which Andy has been setting about with mole-grips while I eat what he's cracked.

We were less than impressed with the French-Canadian guy who turned up with his three kids and stood around talking to the owners Italian wife while we all sweated and beat at the trees, dragging nets-ful back to tip into the trailer. He then upped and left with a bucketful of ready cracked ones! I think he needs to be told the story about the Little Red Hen. Just because he sails his boat and doesn't use an engine, and always rows ashore because he doesn't have an outboard, and they all play sea shanties on the squeezebox and pipes. Pah! At least us dysfunctional ones who brought our kids up on TV all mucked in as a team and had a jolly good time.