Sad Spooky Story

[Pete Cooper]

I am posting this here as some of you have met my brother either in the pub, on the Scuttlebutt Cruise, or both.
Last Saturday Paul was driving up here with his youngest daughter and a friend of hers for a few days sailing. He wasn't arriving until evening so I borrowed his boat to use as a motor boat to take a friend of ours to Rothesay. She is from Leicester so thought that this was brilliant and we had been invited on a booze cruise up Loch Long/Goil in the evening.
So we left Kip heading towards Toward. Got nearly to Toward and the rev counter stopped working. That didn't worry me, but a few minutes later the oil pressure warning ligth came on. I immediately stopped the engine and went to investigate. The bolt holding the alternator to the block had snapped. I decided that we would have to sail back to Kip and then use the engine for the minimum time to berth the boat. I rolled out half the genoa and we set off back, unfortunately with the wind from the North. We were doing over 7 knots to windward with half a genoa, so that tells you what the wind strength was like. Anyway once we had settled in to sailing I 'phoned Paul as with the engine being out of commission I thought that he might want to change his plans. I got his voicemail so left a message for him to call me. 10 minutes later I got a call from Paul - somebody had run into the back of him on the A1 near Doncaster - his car was undriveable and they were getting a lift back home. I didn't tell him about his boat problems until he was safely home. That evening we discussed things and he decided to come up the next day, but without the girls - his other car is a Smart Roadster so definitely a 2 seater and minimal luggage.
After a late night on Saturday I got up and fortunately managed to remove the broken bolt and replace it with another but only as a temporary solution. Paul arrived Sunday evening, and on Monday we had a superb sail round Bute. Got to Toward, we were going clockwise round Bute, and there was a problem with the electronics - the autopilot wouldn't take us where we wanted to go, and the C80 kept rebooting. That's all under warranty so not an issue, but all in all quite exciting.
Sorry for such a long post, but as it is my 10th post on this forum I thought that I would make it worth while!

[Telo]

Hmm, maybe it's you......................