Cruising with Dileas has not run smooth. Once she was in the water the weather turned grim with strong winds and very, very heavy rain. However she waited faithful at her post for the moment to come.

Big storm coming in, calm before the storm

One morning last week as the wind blew and the rain lashed down; a short parenthesis here, rain in Okinawa is not like rain in Scotland in that it is warm and pleasing to the skin, I am primped up to go to work. As I step into the truck with horribly swollen knee, I notice that there is something funny about  Dileas. It took a long time to process the data that she had been dismasted.

Spot the difference

So I have to; rush in, change, wade out, disentangle, retrieve and go to my first meeting in record time. Fiddling with little shackles when up to your neck in the East China Sea, with rain hammering down, cognizant of the obligation  to give a presentation in 30 minutes, is a formative experience.

Anyway one of the side-stays had snapped. My fault as it was probably not tight enough and the battering of the wind made the mast bang from side to side. Poor little side-stay.

More guilt

Of course, it is now the weekend, the wind is fair, the weather is beautiful, conditions are perfect for me to invade North Korea.  I lie dismasted in Shioya Bay.