Day to Day - update

Day 120. Now I remember my childhood frustration with channels in sand. As soon as the tide touches them the walls collapse back in rendering them useless. I need to find a way of shoring them up. My mind goes back to those awful photographs from the trenches where they used wood to stabilise the soil. That’s what I need to do – find some suitable wood planking. Those awful photographs make me think of other awful things like the Little and Large Christmas Special. I just can’t get them out of my head. Now I’m thinking about bad Kylie Minogue songs. Come on, get yourself together and find a supply of planks.

Day 121. The channel is all but complete. With a plentiful supply of planking and a good saw and hammer I have shored up the sand. The tide when it came in filled the channel all the way up to where the boat used to be until I cut it up to make wood planking to shore up the channel. Now I know what people might be thinking and it has crossed my mind too. Did Little and Large have a Christmas Special or was that Cannon and Ball?

Day 122. I was of course only joking. I didn’t cut up the boat. I used the JCB to drive to town and pick up timber from the wood merchants. I then used it to dig out the main channel in sections to allow me to re-enforce as I went. I did it at low tide the sand was at its most structurally robust. Thank goodness for the bookstore having a special offer on ‘How to Build a Channel for a Boat on the Beach in a Day’. The co-incidence of this being in their front window seems almost unimaginable. Today we sail.

Day 123. How apt. Reverse the day and you get – 3,2,1, launch. I have been at sea now for over six hours. It was hard to get the boat away from the shore but once I was past the shore tides I found the rowing easier. I was tempted to put up the small sail but for now I will rely on ‘arm power’. I am making sure that I eat ‘little and often’ to fuel the engine that is me. Every time I eat gulls circle the boat. I am reminded of Erik Cantona’s quote “When the seagulls follow the trawler it’s because there are no sardines in Seething anymore.” I am feeling heartened and happy to be in control of my own destiny at last although I am getting a little fed up of singing ‘row, row, row the boat’.

Day 124. One plus one equals two, two plus two equals four. I don’t know when I have been so bored. I can only row in short bursts as it turns out my intensive training with the two tennis rackets in no way simulated the real experience of rowing. I have to take hour-long rests after every twelve strokes of painful movement. 12, rest, 12, rest, 12, rest. The land is now a distant blur. I have kept myself entertained by playing I Spy. Most of the words start with S and it’s hard to not answer correctly straight away. I hope I have the mental toughness for this. I am already missing the freedom of the shore. I was a little shocked and horrified to open up one of my Tupperware meals only to find that it was filled with maggots. I wish I had taken my plastic containers from a good business and not the £1 shop. Never has the phrase ‘buy well buy once’ meant so much.

Day 125. I have felt low at many, many times during my isolation but perhaps today is the lowest I have felt. I have opened all my food parcels and nearly everyone has maggots. The water is fresh but I doubt I have enough food to last more than four or five days. I can’t leave my mood behind because there is nowhere to go on the boat. I can’t row because my heart is in despair. What can I do, there is no place to get new food and I am too far from my island to go back. I tossed the contents of one of the Tupperware containers overboard. Even feeling this bad I am not going to litter the ocean. Then, the weirdest sound like a wet round of applause. I sat back up and looked over the edge of the boat and in amazement saw hundreds of fish breaking the surface to eat the maggots. Another old phrase comes to mind. ‘Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll never see his family again’. I have never fished but I’m sure I can learn.