Waiting for the tide

Amazing adventures

Lockdown learning has been a big hit all across the media and PBO’s online series of ‘100 DIY projects you can do at home’ has been very popular. But I realise now that trying to learn something ‘during’ lockdown is one thing... but what has lockdown taught us? What have we learned that we didn’t even realise we didn’t know?

Well, it will be different for each one of us, but I’m with those who are discovering that the imposition of social limitations has actually revealed their own selfimposed limitations: failure of the imagination; poverty of ambition; paralysis, quibbling, prevarication and self-criticism.

Put simply, Carpe Diem: seize the day and fill your locker with amazing adventures whenever you can. What’s really stopping you from joining Huw Williams on the Whitsundays (page 84) or Richard Hare in Provence (page 52)?

Life – you say? With obligations, dependents and the dreaded ‘responsibilities’ what hope for amazing adventures?

Two examples: if all goes to plan for the duo at the top of page 8 (transatlantic in a Leisure 17) they’ll be dining out on their adventures for decades to come. If it all falls apart next week and the boat never leaves the yard... good on them for daring to dream.

And on page 36 we have ‘200 miles in a 16-footer’, the tale of a couple of good mates away together for a week, setting up camp every evening, lighting up the barbecue and drinking wine. Does it get any better than that?

What has lockdown taught us? A week-long potter along the waterways, camping and eating barbecue dinners is a superb, simple adventure – we just maybe couldn’t see it...