This is fun and we're having it

While cruising the canal system over the last couple of months, I have been promoting a couple of sayings, one of which is the title of this piece. One of the reasons for my repeating this has been the volume of incidents. While incident is an integral part of cruising, this last trip has generated nearly as many as the previous 13 years. For instance, I have only gone badly aground six times over the period I have been living on a boat - but three of them have been in the last two months. Of these three, two caused me to stir up gunk and water in the fuel tank while trying to get free. In both cases, this caused the engine to stall and refuse to start, leading me to need to replace fuel filter and clean the fuel line and lift and injector pumps,

I had thought this tendency was continuing yesterday when I saw something I have never seen before - a car broken down at the side of the motorway with vapour. This time it was not steam, representing a duff radiator, (which is common enough) but rather smoke coming from the flames coming from under the nose of the car.

Today by contrast, was fairly straightforward. Simply drive to Ardrossan, buy a couple of ferry tickets, and take a ferry to Arran. As proof, the photo shows a ferry leaving the island.