Time to re-launch

About two years ago, my pilot cutter, The Promise, was rammed and almost sunk by a Spanish Trawler about ten miles off the coat of southern Brittany, while on passage to the Morbihan. There were four of us on board: my permanent crew of two and American traveller, Thomas Edson Colt. We were lucky. They came out of a fog bank and we were in the way, motoring gently south with fishing lines out and lazing on the warm deck. The Promise took a broadsides which stove in her starboard fore quarter, splitting her old oak topsides and fracturing timbers that were growing when Nelson was at Trafalgar. I thought we'd had it and seeing my sextant under water, ordered abandon ship. We launched the life raft onto a rolling swell and I watched as my compliment swam to the orange shell and wriggled like seals into the bucking interior. I punched the epirb and joined them, thrashing across the open water as my home for three years disappeared behind me.

But she didn't. Disappear that is. She held her own; somehow The Promise didn't sink. She wallowed well down but stopped short of that awful plunge that a sailor dreads. Two other trawlers were on the scene by now and with much shouting and gesturing, The Promise was taken in tow and was eventually beached somewhere on the Scorf at Lorient. We were picked up, not by our Spanish assailant but by a Breton who typically waved any idea of disaster aside, supplied strong drink to revive, fish stew and warm clothes.

I'll slowly recount the next two years over the coming months but suffice to say; a great deal of channel hopping ensued, I ended up living in a first floor container conversion in the yard appointed to restore my ship. I was on the spot, more or less, working alongside the men who would rebuild The Promise.

When I wasn't pestering them, I was able to take up my writing once more. You may recall, one of the reasons I was in Brittany in the first place, was to research a novel. Sounds pretentious I know but my book is partly set there and involves some cross channel adventuring in the 17th century. I was there to retrace the route of my characters, gain valuable experience of conditions, history and undertake a perilous journey in a small boat.

That's my story so far and that's the story I will tell; so if your sitting comfortably...?