A recovery sail.

After 4 days of inactivity with my first cold in around 2 years I was keen to get out today and thought that a trip in my pedal powered boat was the best option. It is definitely less aerobic than a mountain bike ride and there often seems no need to work hard since it’s difficult to detect an increase in speed when you up the effort. I’d just cruise along and turn back when I felt like it.

Getting the boat to the canal and back takes a similar effort to pedalling along and takes about 15 minutes each way. I was met on the canal bank with an enthusiastic family who asked the usual question such as “Did you build it yourself?” I take my time getting the boat onto the water and prepared to sail. It’s a strange transition to leave solid ground and enter into another medium. The boat is, however, very stable and never rocks from side to side. Today I could feel a headwind coming from the north, which probably explains why the weather has cooled down compared to yesterday. I found later from the app. Strava that a segment of my outbound journey took me 8 minutes but my wind assisted return over the same distance only took 6 minutes 50 seconds.

I’ve said before that the boat never seems to be about performance but is more about exploration. Today I turned back because I wanted to feel the effect of the breeze behind me but once I’d turned I didn’t feel the breeze any more as I travelled along with it. Having had a chat with more enthusiastic onlookers I passed my starting point and went past a boat mooring before turning again to return to my start. What I want to do with the boat is to do some longer trips to the White Bear Marina at Adlington and the first lock at Johnson’s Hillock. These would both be good places to have lunch, which seems like an appropriate activity to accompany a sail. They would each be journeys of over 2 hours so need reliability from the boat. I had a lot of difficulties earlier in my development but seem to have solved all the problems. I even tried a short full power run today and everything worked fine. Tomorrow I’ll return to mountain biking for a more aerobic workout. I’ve realised the closest exercise equivalent to pedal powered boating. It’s swimming. I’ve got the same type of tired feeling I used to get when I went swimming with my son years ago.

My biggest boating desire, though, would be to take everything I’ve learnt in the construction of “Perseverance” and apply it to a new version. It would be lighter and better looking but I don’t have a need for or space for 2 boats. I may try to sell Perseverance, having already acquired the materials to build the new version. Construction would be easy enough in less than 2 weeks since I now know what I’m doing!

Since writing this I’ve been pointed in the direction Youtube video which features me on this very voyage! I’m at 13 minutes 23 seconds in the video. I’d just passed my starting point and later turned back to my finish.