I do remember Dave and I having a conversation in late autumn 2017 about getting south quickly from Massachusetts to avoid the onset of winter. We lingered, didn’t get south and subsequently felt the cold.

Well it seems like history is repeating itself. We are not quick learners. Halifax, Nova Scotia had its first snow flurries last Thursday and this morning in Lunenburg was decidedly frosty.  Beautiful but chilly.

We motored 30 odd miles along the coast to Liverpool on the river Mersey. No, we didn’t sing the song about ferries, thank you very much. Similar to last year, docks are being dismantled around us. Our thermals are out. Weather watching has become a full time occupation as forecasts seem to change too regularly for our liking.

Furthermore, the pitch of our prop seems to be little squiffy. How do we know….motoring speed is slower than normal. With the cold, we want to motor quickly. You get my drift.

We thought initially we just had a dirty bottom. No one with a boat (or without for that matter) wants a dirty bottom. Dave suspects there is some underwater growth which is stopping the prop from feathering. A rogue barnacle or a collection of sea squirts maybe.

Options….find somewhere to dry out, wait for low water and investigate when the water has recceeded. Option two, get the boat hauled out and sit in some slings long enough for us to clean the prop. Or option three. Perhaps the least attractive but also the most straightforward. Put a wetsuit on, pretend to be a child having a good time swimming in the North Sea in early June (with no central nervous system) and take the plunge.

Writing about the cold then contemplating diving on the boat don’t really reconcile themselves. No definitive way forward as yet.  Dave is having another ‘Dark and Stormy’ while he ruminates.  I’m certainly not going in!