Life in Brixham

For the past week I have been living on Jomima in Brixham. Fortunately, she is large enough for life on board to be quite comfortable and it is possible to use her as a ‘house boat’ for an extended period if necessary. Unfortunately, Ann had to visit our son at short notice so I was in residence on my own. It has been over two years since I had last been in Brixham with Jomima so it was interesting to see the changes that have taken place. New gardens have been added, Woolworths is now a new Tesco Metro and some of the boats have changed in the marina. All of the changes seem to be positive and it was extremely pleasant to meet old friends and talk about what they have been doing while we have been travelling.
It is of course high season in Brixham so the walk into Brixham from the marina was crowded with youngsters (or their parents) fishing for crabs off the harbour wall and other children enthusiastically joining in the fun at the local outward bound activity centre. It was great to see so many visitors bringing in vital income to the area.One of the new boats in the marina was ‘Dream of Balkie’ which is a wooden clinker hulled sailing boat built in Scotland. She has been lovingly individually made and varnished on the west coast of Scotland and then sailed down from there to Brixham. It was great to see a new boat that was not just another white fibre glass boat just like all of the others.

Sadly, this will be the last post in Jomima's diary because she has now been sold.  After five years of fun and experiences, in places as far apart as Scotland, Devon and Paris, the ever increasing cost of fuel has meant that we have had to move on to less expensive adventures.  I hope that you enjoyed reading about Jomima's travels and that I may, one day, start another Blog.  So, goodbye from Jomima's Diary.

On The Move

At last the day has arrived for me to move Jomima, with the help of a large truck, to her new home at Mayflower Marina in Plymouth. The truck arrived at 8:00 am at Newark, where I had stayed overnight on Jomima to avoid an early start and the heavy commuter traffic. I gave that sort of thing up two years ago when I took early retirement.

There was already a boat on the truck when it arrived and that was quickly unloaded and put in the water. Jomima was then lifted out from her home of the last six months and placed carefully on the lorry. While all of the straps were being fitted I took the opportunity to anti-foul the six places where supports had been placed to support Jomima during the winter. I had carefully kept the remains of a tin of paint for this purpose because, if I did not complete this work, we would have been trailing six clumps of weed within a fairly short period of time.

The journey to Plymouth, at a steady 55 mph, was uneventful. However it did rain quite heavily half way down which liberally coated Jomima in dirt and traffic film, some of which remained in the usually covered helm area. After a short wait, outside Plymouth, we met the escort vehicle for our wide load. We then proceeded into the unloading area at the marina to park overnight for unloading tomorrow.