Summer Time When the Weather's fine!

Summer Time When the Weather's fine!
The Golden Cloud 13/7/2012


Again after a little bit of a wait a return to the blog. Summer is started (apparently no one told the weather) and I've been up to plenty of memorable moments!


Sailing on the River Leri (with Nathan Thomas) (Following floods) Isle of Wight Festival (Mum & Dad, The O'Rourke's, Amanda Bright, and the Lovegrove's) (with floods) Wimbledon (With Dave Westmore) (with prolonged rain and abit of flooding) and then moving to North England to work in rivers (Same week as some floods) .... I guess its no surprise that people have started calling me Noah!




Although the international press may have told you the Isle of Wight Festival was a total wash out, in fact by my recent standards it was lovely! Great music, great friends, great times! And Wimbledon well it was just a walk in the park, I don't know why people make out like Wimbledon has a problem with rain!

After a fantastic few week's I have now I have migrated to the Preston area of England for 10 weeks work. The work is in River Water Quality Monitoring, and is for Aberystwyth University/CREH. 


The work is fantastic good fun, and also gives me plenty of time outdoors. It only builds my feelings of wanting to become more sustainable. The Beauty of the wild sections of the river, up in the moors and through the rolling hills. And the contrast of this, to the river's coming out of Urban Areas, and river's that are decorated like Christmas tree's with condoms, pantiliner, baby wipes, and tampons that have floated out through sewer overflows.


It makes you realise how bad our modern, unsustainable, not thinking lifestyles are. It makes you realise, something's got to change.


And so with the money I'm earning from this monitoring to help improve the environment, I will be setting up systems on The Golden Cloud to be more sustainable. Including Solar Panels, hand pumped reverse osmosis pumps for water sources, and onboard propagation for growing my own food onboard.


Fingers crossed I earn plenty of money, and I can put this all into practice.


In other news I'm now on Twitter follow me on @Goldencloud24


Speak soon

Getting a bit choppy

Getting a Bit Choppy
The Golden Cloud 16/6/12


As You may have heard on the national and international news, over the last week or so, the river I call home (the River Leri) has has some serious flooding. Luckily like Noah, I got myself an arc before these floods arrived, and so unlike the villages of Tal-y-bont, Dol-y-bont, Borth and Llandre, as well as the countless caravans who I share the valley with, when the floods came, the water just passed peacefully under my keels!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-18378124


The event was quite exciting and kept me onboard for a few extra hours but other than that was just another adventure!!! 


The day when the floods came started like any other at Ynyslas... Windy.
But that day the wind was different, it blew hard and strong, and for once being on the water was quite different to land. Every gust changed my perspective on life, from sea, to sky, to sea, to sky! It was getting a bit choppy.

As I knew I had no chance of paddling ashore as per usual, I decided at that point to row an anchor chain from my boat to shore, that way at least I knew there would be a way out if things went wrong!


In the process of putting in the anchor, I had a bit of a bear grylls style manly moment. A gust of wind (on that day we had gusts up to Force 10!) blew me back on the bank, and as a result I slipped and gashed a hole in my foot. Needless to say in the moment I didn't even notice, but by the time I returned to the boat, it was starting to hurt. So I decided to reduce the gangreen risk, and boiled up some water, put in a dab of flash, and with a scouring pad brushed out all the mud from the river... I must admit it kinda hurt!

The cut post cleaning up, was alot more impressive when my foot was covered in mud and blood with the cut open wide!

Then I settled down with a mug of hot cuppa soup, and got ready to sleep through the storm.


As the night went on, the waters only rose, the tide never went out, Lloyd of the boatyard tried to wake me up by beeping his horn and flashing his lights at me from the bank. He'd been told of what was to come and wanted me to get away to saftey! (although in all honesty I was probably in the safest place!) Needless to say, I slept through it like a baby!


I woke in the morning to the sound of police sirens, then Lloyd tried again, and this time I woke up! He took me to shore, for me to find the area a police cordon and was being evacuated! The flood waters rose all around. We sat on the bank watching it all, as the land around us flooded the boatyard was fine! Maybe I shouldn't be supprised, as Ynys is Welsh for Island, and Ynyslas boatyard was the only land for miles around!

As the morning became evening, and the weather settled, I hoisted my bedding up the mast to dry it out. Tomorrow was another day, and this was just another adventure!

The flood was just another story for the boatyard, but it also brought with it free gas bottles, and firewood, we even saw bikes and tables float by!


Since the floods have receeded, and I've been back to the usual ways, with the exception of the extra fun of collecting tree's from the river and sand bars for firewood!

During my search for firewood yesterday, I also harvested a bucket of Samphire, a small succulent plant highly prized in culanary circles, should go nicely with my dinner!


Onboard the flood showed up a few leaks and a few worries, so I've now wired up the VHF so I can call for help if the worst happens, practised crank starting the engine and rigged up an interior tent so I'm dry from the leaks.


This evening the rains are falling again, and the wind is howling too. Who knows what will float down the river tomorrow!