Dismasted

The plan had been to go sailing for a couple of days.  Life had other plans.  The boat ran aground on a sandbank the day before I arrived and the mast was snapped in two by a great gust of wind filling the sails just at the wrong moment.  After the party had salvaged what they could and were rowing ashore in the dinghy one of the oars snapped in the strong current!  Heroic paddling native American canoe style got them ashore downstream from where they wanted to be.  They found themselves in the grounds of an empty castle with high locked gates.  Luckily there was about a foot space at the bottom of the gates.  Super luckily all this happened the day before I arrived, I doubt I could have squeezed through the gap, even in the squishy mud.  

In the afternoon the others went to see if they could get the boat ashore and onto the trailer to haul it home for repair at the end of the week.  I was preparing dinner, and said I'd catch them up.  When I wandered along the lane an hour or so later I noticed the truck parked up some distance from the jetty and walked on down to see what they were up to.  No sign of anyone.  The boat was still bobbing at anchor but there was not a soul the whole length of the bay.  Strange.  

When I walked back up the lane I spotted a note on the truck's windscreen wipers apologising to the farmer for blocking the gate into his field.  The truck had broken down!   About half a mile from the cottage along a narrow country lane.

I fell in love with a field of barley and spent the next hour blipping it [ here.]  When I got to the cottage they were just sending out a search party.  The thing is this: there was only one lane to and from the boat, my friends  and I all had to have been walking along it at the same time.  How was it possible that we missed each other?  Cue music :-)

We eventually figured it out but the most interesting thing was how equally divided the group were between those who revelled in the mysteriousness of it all and those who couldn't rest without a rational explanation.  A similar split to those questioning whether the litany of minor disasters was a hint that J. should let the sailing go as he approaches his physical limits, and those who thought he should rise to the challenge, not let circumstances defeat him.  These hugely amusing discussions separated the coaches from the therapists/healers amongst us too.