Most of my readers will be too young to remember this but I have Triffid in the heads compartment, my boat has an alien life form!
Basically it’s wet rot spreading from the deck leak, it has already attacked the beam shelf,  now it’s heading south.

It’s time for radical surgery! Better out than in.
I have already sawn out part of the deck beam and have temporarily cured the deck leak but remedial action is needed so I am planning some new deck work this autumn.
And this was supposed to be about sailing, but its mostly about repairing, that’s the way it goes with wooden boats, like it or loathe it! I am planning a temporary solution and strengthening to the deck beam so that I can get some sailing in this year but it is only temporary, a permanent solution will have to be found.
Tomorrow I head south and east for an entirely different kind of sailing off the east coast of Suffolk and Essex. Looking at the charts I was a bit startled by the depths. On the Clyde I get worried when  the echo shows ten metres, it must be time to tack.  Off Suffolk ten metres is all you get. It’s forty years since I was last there, I need to adjust! As a fellow berth holder at Largs said last week, “I tack when I can step ashore”.  It’s a bit of a culture shock but as my skipper is just back from France with a car load of wine I am sure I will adjust.