April Showers

The harbour fills with its daily dose of people now, an odd assortment of multi-coloured individuals visiting and revisiting, creating new or treading on old memories; laying about like washed up seals, with pints, pasties and picnics spread out and left abandonded on the wall. The same old April showered faces gather in the same old familiar places intent on claiming the sunshine.

Glorious and welcome calm seas invite boats to sea, as fishermen look for lobsters and crabs amongst the rocks, in a desperate attempt to loose the winters long grip. Not many boats have arrived here yet, charter skippers still yawn at the thought of launch days and surveyors impending visits. Out come the dusty flares and fire extinguishers, the first aid packages of damp bandages and plasters; the 'put away safely' important, random items that no boat should sail without are destined to remain lost. Slowly the realisation that a new season has started dawns upon Clovelly's unsuspecting boating fraternity.

Right on cue, as if the roar of the waking Red lion can be heard across the Bideford Bay and around the ragged points of, Baggy, Morte and Bull; the early rising yachtsmen of the great seaport of Ilfracombe, shake out their sails and arrive to plunder the bottled reserves at the salt drenched bar. Catching out the unprepared Harbour Master, guilty of neglecting the importance and value of the 'Yachtsman's Shower Room'.

Beneath the Icelandic Ash cloud we bask in the glories of sunshine and look hopefully forward to a calm and exciting summer. Soon my own boat shall be returning to the harbour and then, let the season begin.