We air the three stringed kite

We soften over winter. Our ears re-acclimatise to simply rushing round the Earth's centre at 600 miles an hour whilst circling the sun at twice the speed of sound. Return to the water requires restoration of memories of motion learnt from two metre swells, from being rocked to sleep by oceanic waves attenuated by harbour walls and sticky silts.

Hands need to re-grow calluses and re-accustom to the gentle woundings of artificial fibres twisted into ropes, stainless edges on tackle and the ravages of seawater on fingernails. Lips chap and salt reflected sunlight burns.

We return slowly, gently to the sea's rhythms this year. Force 2 to 4 and sea-state calm. We test the off-season's changes: new engine, cruising chute. Our engine has run for less than ten hours; we anyway minimise its unfamiliar rattle by sailing when possible; sailing Saturday and Sunday onto moorings where an engine would have eased the action, but spoilt the experience.

A quiet NNE wind breathed us along yesterday morning, barely holding the genoa open, hardly noticing the addition of the mainsail. It seemed an ideal time to test the chute and, after two attempts misthreading and minor tangles it swelled and filled and gave us a beautiful calm 2 knots of speed and a sense of achievement - unmeasurable.

At night we resynchronise to the sun and the urgent cry of the oyster-catcher, the greedy call of the greater gulls and the croak of little egrets. Faint singing of halyards and the occasional slap of waves haunt our dreams without waking us from well earned rest. Tides come and go with hardly a murmur except the bouncing kiss of a directionless tender on the transom composite and bathing ladder.

We victual and provision. We plan and delay. Time will come for tide and travel. Soon.

Not one, not two, but three foals

You just nip out of the forest for a couple of days and foals are suddenly like buses.