Monday night 18 Jan - in which the boat and engine get separated and are SUNK

Good grief, as we hadn’t had enough excitement the day before.

We had a lovely day on Monday, we went for a walk on the beach, Darren swam and snorkelled, we collected shells, Darren went for a potter in the boat, and I finished my book that I had been reading since before Christmas – A Tale of Two Cities. All was so much better with the world, though I disappointingly did not have a black eye from my run in with the annex pole the evening before.

Darren decided to leave his boat on the beach overnight. The beach had a shallow incline which went steeper just at the high tide mark. I asked him a couple of times if he was sure about this, but he wanted to get started early in the morning with a good fishing expedition so he was happy to do that.
At about 2 o’clock a.m. he awakened me and was listening to the usually quiet waves crashing onto the beach. He leapt up in a moment, grabbed the torch and some clothes and ran from the caravan saying he was off to check on the boat. My eyes stayed wide open in the dark, listening to the waves. They did not seem any louder or more aggressive than the night before, but it transpired that Darren had slept through that night, and had not heard the high tide that time. After a while I realised he had been gone really quite a long time. I thought he had left the boat just near the camp. I decided to wait another 10 minutes. It was now 2.30 a.m. Now I was worried, visions of him being caught under the boat with waves washing over him, came to mind, which was not very reassuring.
I had no torch. I knew however that there was a magnetic light stuck to the inside roof of the car. Darren had also shown me a laser light he had been given, which was in the glove box. It can shine very very far, so I thought I could get that and shine it towards where the boat was, so he could at least flash his light in reply. I stumbled around and found the keys to the car, opened the car and tried to turn on the light. It didn’t work. I went back in the caravan and found a head light that barely worked, with that I found the laser light in the car. I was just closing the car door, now in quite a lather as he had not appeared, when I saw a light coming for the direction of the beach, and Darren came up to the car. His first words to me were “ the boat sank and the motor came of it, and I had to pull them out” I immediately felt his jacket, which was not wet, and I burst into tears with relief.
My relief of course gave way to anger pretty quickly, telling him my adventures and worries that night, and hauling him into the caravan to get warm.
Apparently he had not left the boat where I had thought, but completely a different direction, quite some way down the beach, where he hoped to launch it in the morning. Unfortunately the tide had come in rather further than he expected, and the boat had launched its self rather earlier than anticipated. When he had got to where the boat had been there was nothing to be seen, until he saw in the gloom the hull of the boat, upside down in the (actually fairly gentle, but dumpy) surf. When he managed to grab it and turn it over, there was no motor. He eventually saw it, also in the waves, and had to pull it out of the water and try to empty it of water and sand. He had left it by the boat, now much higher than the tide line, and come home.
What a drama! Good grief, never a dull moment. Darren was quite shocked from his adventures, and also cold, so was not able to sleep immediately. We both talked for sometime, me very happy that we had insurance, and he happy he had at least rescued the boat. The engine, he knew, had had it.