Dockside Living

Twister is slowly settling into harbor mode and a few long-overdue projects are getting done. As the stainless steel dodger frame was being reassembled, I noticed that my bicycle (rather, my cousin's bicycle which he had kindly lent me) was missing from the dock where I had parked it--only a few meters from Twister. It was a windy day, but I initially thought someone had brazenly taken it from under my nose. My neighbor suggested it was more likely it had been blown into the drink. The depthsounder read 17 meters which was probably at the limit of my freediving abilities, and I had not been doing much of that recently. Taking the 10 kg Bruce anchor with me as ballast and bicycle hook allowed me to reach the bottom quickly and comfortably. I spotted the bicycle sitting upside down on the first dive. It took me another 7 or 8 dives to hook the anchor onto the bike successfully (visibility was not great). After surfacing for the final time, I pulled the bike up with the rope I had attached to the anchor and gave the bike a good freshwater shower and plenty of WD40.

Recently the second of many messages in bottles I have dropped overboard, was found. Both bottles were found along the Norwegian coast and were dropped in The North Sea--the first one in August 2013 when Bridget and I sailed from Inverness to Bergen, and the second one somewhere between The Shetland Islands and Bergen in April of this year: