What - no boats?

In Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" there is the great line "water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink".

He probably meant the sea voyager eternal worry about fresh water, though of course it could also cover equally dangerous risk of running out of the sailor's trusted rum (or in the case of Robin Knox-Johnston, whisky).

However in my case its water water everywhere and not a drop to float on. For it's been a land lubbers summer so far, with distractions from the new flat and OU finance course.

On Saturday was off to lovely Whitstable (below) for a beach BBQ.

In previous years we have gone out in Alex's Dart, which is very fast and wet, but now he was responsible dad attending to the sausages and burgers.

But we did have useful discussion about outboard motors for my brother's inflatable - though it does still seem quite small for the Thames.

Hence another discussion (this time in Dorset) with my uncle about getting a proper boat for journeys up and down the Thames. He raised the interesting question of why if there are hybrid cars there are no hybrid boats?

It seems from articles like this one there could be a problem with power and you can't charge the batteries by breaking as you can on a car.

Oh well, it was a lovely sunset again....