Sailing after 30 year restoration - Satyr
What does my life consist of...
"I hope your not picking you spots again" she said as I gazed at my chin in the mirror, looking at a burn I had received, such belife she bestows in me. The night before I had scorched myself when a hot rock from the spliff had decided to burn a hole through my skin. "Just looking" I said to the chef, she tutted and walked back into the kitchen at the yacht club.
21 months eirlier I had landed in stansted airport north of London, it was the 22nd of November 2014, flying back from mallorca after finishing the summer season; 7 years working in a night club furnished my jubilee year with a change of seanary, I was committed to living back in the UK. On arrival i took the bus back to my local town, then took a cab from the local station to a venue that, prior to my last visit some two years earlier had not existed, getting out the cab the place was packed for boxing was on, I met my mate who was allowing me to stay in what was when built the biggest housing estate in europe - chantry in Ipswich. Home again. The next day I went to see the boat.
Satyr, her name an anogram for a horney man sailing after thirty year restoration, was conisidentally named before the anogram took effect, untimely the restoration would take more than thirty years - yet the name stuck. She sat on her old cradle - the same one that she had sat on back in the back garden for many years - in Harkstead on the shotley peninsular. On a sight owned by Oyster properties, indeed, that Oyster that produced industrially built blue water cruisers for rich millionaires. There she stood, yet somehow, me and my brother who had intended to go halves with me on the boat, had a predicament on our hands. We needed to move her, and moving a four and a half ton 37 foot sailing vessel from Harkstead barns to fox's marina some six miles up the road toward town was not an easy task, well, It would have been like anything else had we had the money... and I had 700 euro to spare.
The boat had been at Harkstead barns since its removal from the back garden some 2 years earlier, in 2012 my step farther after working at the royal hospital school for some 25 years was retiring. In 2011, while I was still in mallorca living with my biological farther Salvador, a mallorquin man. I had ask my stepfarther what he intended to do with his pride and joy - satyr. "I thought I would sell her" he told me over Skype. "I'll buy her!" I said, optimistic at the project. It was a win win either way as far as I could see, by buying satyr off my stepfarther they could pay for their new house in Rodome south of France and my step rather Robert would be able to use both and not have to lose either. He agreed on a price, ten thousand euros - about £6,000. In my ambivalence, I organised its removal and sent my brother back to England bags packed ready to move the boat to a location he thought fit. In time it arrived at harksted barns in one of the outbuilding, an old graincylo. Occupied by the then going company speed marine, one and run by my brothers best friend who happened to be in the boat building trade, indeed for his help I have always been indebted, olly, who owned and ran speed marine took ocupency of the the barns some years prior, however with his prospective businesses not making the steady income he needed, and with the birth of his second son, he chose to vacate the premises and work back at fox's marina. When I arrived toward the end of 2014 the race was on to move the boat to fox's. For the second time satyr followed olly to his work.
First thought, we needed to cretrate trailer to put satyr on in order to move her, ric (my brother) and tim had other ideas.
During the previous summer when I was in mallorca working and ric was living in the UK, and not long after olly had moved out the barns, and his 50 foot lifeboat he was renervating and all. Tim, a local lad who had his own business in the boat trade was to move in, and soon after had welded some RSJ's together to make a rudimentary chaise, albeit the front axel off a lorry was on reverse, somthing that ric had pointed out in the begining, "it wont center properly because it's on backward, not unless you drag it backward that is!" In the end ric was right much to the frustration of tim who had bolted it on, by this time, two weeks into the build the hoist we had created was nearly finished, painted white all but the axel, we wheeled it out the shed and sure enough it went any which where but the right direction. We reversed the axel, it rolled smooth, the 6 wheeler was now ready, we lifted a Stella to see if it would work, it did, after which we rolled it round satyr's old cradle, disembodied the old cradle with an angle grinder and left the boat suspended in slings. She was ready. On the 23rd of December a local farmer drove over with truck and tractor from close by, he agreed to hitch his tractor to the hoist and transport it 6 mile up the road to fox's for the coast of £150 - a tenth of the coast I would have otherwise had to pay. And so it begnun