Tom: "Day 205

Tom Day 205. Engine test complete — Yanmar holds load clean, bronze sleeve good, no weep at the housing. Barometer 1002 rising after the front passed. Caught a rat in the pantry trap; threw it to the gulls at south beach. Jenny's got the garden coming in. Potatoes, kale, onions. Her tomatoes are flowering in the polytunnel. We're eating better than we did on the *Maersk Kelvin*. Radio's quiet. Picked up a French trawler squawking about quotas at 0300, otherwise nothing. Weather fax says high pressure building through Thursday. The sleeve job took three days. Had to machine the bronze down on the lathe by feel — no micrometer that reads that fine anymore. Your old man would've called it cheating. I called it done. Water's still cold. Fifty-two degrees at the dock. I don't go in past my knees. The spare injector pump arrived on the supply boat. Customs held it six weeks for "inspection." It's a Chinese copy. Cost four hundred quid. Runs fine. I think about the yard at Harwich sometimes. The smell of creosote and hot tar. You and me under the 6-cylinder Sulzer, passing the 36mm ring spanner back and forth without looking. Don't know why I'm writing this. The supply boat takes letters out Mondays. If you get it, you get it. Kevin