Windbound at Croxton

31st January & 1st February

I forgot to mention last time, Sheila says, that on Wednesday she spotted an unusual couple of birds over the field alongside the mooring. After careful inspection through the binoculars, and cross checking our bird book, she concluded that they were redwings. These are a winter visitor in these parts, and also a class of restricted design sailing dinghies formerly popular at Fishguard Bay Yacht Club.

Yesterday morning we made what can only be described as a seriously lazy start. The weather was sounding awful, we had no plans to go anywhere by boat, so we stayed put in bed until thirst for tea drove me forth to make some.

My main worry was the sound of the mooring lines creaking as the boat was blown about by the wind. I knew after our encounters with Cat Flap and Tinky Mac's yesterday that they weren't gripping the ever soggier mud desperately well. Checking after breakfast, however, confirmed that they were still hanging in there.

When we came back from a shopping trip into Middlewich, I set out the centre line as additional security. At first I just used one pin, but this immediately started to pull out (the wind was still blasting away something fierce) so I resorted to multi pinning, driving another through the eye on the top of the first one, and a third through the eye of the second, so that there is a splayed trident of pins holding the line down.

As may be imagined, the afternoon was spent in the boat: knitting, watching a DVD with a claim to have the daftest plot of anything Audrey Hepburn ever made (Paris when it sizzles) (both Sheila) and playing around with alternative ways of making web photo albums (me). I have three alternative strategies, using iPhoto, PhotoShop and Dreamweaver (which actually borrows Fireworks for the job)

The first is the simplest, but as iPhoto has only limited editing options, it means exporting the images, cleaning them up in PhotoShop and then reimporting them to iPhoto to make the album. As I've commented before, PhotoShop itself produces a very bloated set of files, much of them unnecessary since I'm adding my own templates in Dreamweaver.

The Fireworks/Dreamweaver bit has its own problems – the original images aren't rescaled, so you have to save them in web format in PhotoShop first, and then the result still needs faffing about with after the event. On the whole, I suspect iPhoto has it for simplicity of result, leaving me with plenty of options to play around with things in Dreamweaver afterwards.

The only other distraction yesterday was a stoppage notice from Waterscape.com which referred to the boating season (as opposed to the stoppage season, presumably). I sent an email back asking if, as we weren't in the boating season this month, I could have a refund on my licence.

This morning saw much of the same, really. Another seriously lazy start, on the same excuse, followed by a quick trip into Middlewich and then mucking about on the boat. The weather forecast is better for tomorrow, which is probably just as well, as we're getting short of water, and beginning to feel just a touch of cabin fever.

While I was off the boat, Sheila took a call from Karen at BW as a result of my email yesterday. I think they may have missed the point, as it was to reassure us that the stoppage referred to was coming off by the end of next week. Oh well, at least they're listening, all we have to do now is make them understand...