The marina were getting rid of some fenders. They had come off other peoples boats and were floating around the marina, so now the fenders were up for grabs. We had two fenders that we had tried to fix, but they were leaking again, so replacing them at no cost to ourselves made us winners.
When the weather is stormy like it is at the moment, we make sure that the boat is sucure by adding safety lines where we need to and making use of the extra fenders that I had got from the marina.
Realistically we are in a very good position in Bangor Marina as the storms are coming from the West and because Belfast Lough is on the East coast, then we are in the lee of the island. Even with that said, there are plenty of white caps in the Lough and Beverley really did a blowy day in Bangor blog.
Inside I was very snug and warm making up some new chafe protectors, the ones on the back ropes I had made in March of 2021, so they were nearly a year old and they were the worse for wear. Chafe protector are a great way to reuse old denim jeans as on pair of jeans will make eight chafe protectors.
Viewer question of the week
Have we ever been scared while at sea and in bad weather? This was a good question to talk about because we have had storm after storm and we are currently battling with storm Eunice, with storm Franklin due to hit at the weekend.
The simple answer to this is yes, so what we thought we would talk about is how we have overcome these fears. For me the scariest moment has nothing to do with the sea but more the feeling I felt when I thought that I was going to pack up a stable life and choose a life of adventure. Otherwise the other time I have felt scared is when I was at Chicken rock, for most of that journey I just had to cling on and keep the coast guard informed of our progress every 15minutes, so I didn't really have the opportunity to feel scared. But in that journey I had to go forward to lash the sail down as it kept riding up. Going forward in simply dreadful seas was scary, but equally I had no choice so I did it.
Now Beverley has lots of anxiety, so she overthinks problems and looks for ways that she can reduce her anxiety and the number one method is to be prepared.
Be Prepared
For us there are a number if ways in which you can be prepared
- Weather apps - There are lots of different ones out there, but when we use them, we use them in gust mode because it is the gusts that will cause you problems. The other thing to be aware of is that it is much harder to predict what will happen with storms because they have a lot of energy in them so you have to believe the generalities of the weather forecasts not the detail.
- Prepare the boat for storms - We always prepare our boat for storms so we have things like, close the seacocks, close the hatches, fit the lifelines etc. By always being prepared for a storm then we know that the boat is prepared so we do not have to run around thinking we have forgotten this or we have forgotten that. We have a list to help us with this and you can find that in our resources
Face your fear
One of my sayings is to face your fear. It can be hard, but you have to face it because it is only by facing your fear do you have the opportunity to overcome it. Now I have been a brownie leader and I would set the the Brownies tasks that would get them to face their fears, so that would be things like dealing with heights, dealing with spiders being blind folded and things like that. The phrase "Face your fear" is out of a book called Dune along with another saying which is "Fear is the mind killer". It is true though, fear can debilitate you, but there is a sure way of overcoming fear and that is
Get experienced
By facing your fears then you will gain experience, experience of how you react and experience of how the boat will react. Try different things, this allows you to improve your technique and practice when ever you can
Fishermen say you should be scared of the sea. I don't know about that but you should respect it because it is a dangerous mistress.
