A wry smile in the rain

With a wry smile, I endured a king-sized downpour on my bike on an afternoon when the meteorologists assured us of a dry late winter’s day. And it poured, bucketed down!

It isn’t pleasing to have gallons of fresh water poured down the neck of your bright yellow cycling jacket, and to be squirted – hosed – over your lower back as puddles learning to be lakes are flicked up by the back tyre.

How heroic to endure it so bravely, you might think, but a good mix of sarcasm was mixed in.

One of the last big storms I endured on my swallowing-the-anchor voyage, down in the Roaring Forties, was scorned by the prosecution in a ghastly trial held in camera which claimed I was smuggling.

Jolly boating weather

A storm? There was no storm, mocked the prosecution, and produced a fellow said to be a UK meteorologist who refused to accept that a storm occurred then.

He inferred that I was enjoying jolly boating weather, down in that area noted for, named after, its notorious weather.

And that gross injustice was very much in mind at the weekend because we are close to Valentine’s Day and the storm I endured happened on the 13th of February.

The irony at the weekend was that experts couldn’t get the weather right in their own neck of the woods, and yet had the gall to offer ‘evidence’ that had me sent down to a longer prison sentence than the terrorist in the Lockerbie bombing.

A dull jury

The weather I endured in the Southern Ocean, an area I have often sailed, was far more ferocious than anything we see in Britain, and several barristers challenged the prosecution …

Continues on the blogs for my ocean adventuring book, Sailing to Purgatory, at 

  http://sailingtopurgatory.com/index.php/feeds/346-a-wry-smile-in-the-rain