Dinghies

Dinghy sailors have been out in force recently, mostly on week days.  They might be racing but if they are they are being coached in the process.  We could hear the bloke in the RIB, armed with loud hailer, giving them "encouragement".

It has been a strange old Spring.  This time last year we had a garden full of flowers. 2021 has been cooler and very dry.  There have been no sunbathers on the beach in March and April, yet lots of people (F included) had been swimming in January and February - right up until it snowed.

These days F's changing bike tyres for a fitness regime.  I supervise the ones done on the balcony.

Sunday 10 days ago it was 4 (!), some out on the roadside.  She complained her hands hurt from pushing the black bit back onto the metal bit.  There were spanners and glue and little patch things and lots of grunting and sighing.  Serves her right; she shouldn't go out on the bike and leave me at home.

F SAID the first puncture was a PUNCTURE - went bang/psssssst - the other 3 were all slow leak manufacturing faults on brand new inner tubes.  She was well annoyed about that as she'd bought 4 new inner tubes and they had turned out to be rubbish quality (made in a country a very long way away and probably brought here on one of those big container ships we see every day).

I've agree to post the flat tyre score - it's 10 in total in about 3 weeks.  The first 4 were: 3 inner tubes brought over from UK with our gear when we moved - two went at 'seams' and one at where the valve was welded in, the 4th was one of those self healing ones and never even made it onto the road.  It exploded in a mess of green muck just being pumped up in the wheel.  (Mr B was in UK and when F told him about it on the phone he said his daughter had just had the same experience with two of those.)  What a mess!

F got a new back tyre and tube, partly because the wheel broke a spoke and needed servicing anyway and because the old tyre was also of pre-Greece vintage and a bit worn and perished.  That's the one that went bang/pssssst - the new one.  It hadn't gone 3 km.  The new inner installed at the roadside did 13km before slow leak developed close to the valve.  That one had to be repaired on the road side.  

The new inner on the front lasted until 27 km mark and went like the back - slow leak close to the valve.  She walked home from there, replaced the front with yet another new. Checked the tyre  (marked tyre and rim and even turned the tyre 180 degrees just to prove to herself it was nothing in the tyre.) and set about repairing all the slow leaks.

Next day she went to go cycling and the new front was flat - leaking from a seam close to the valve - it hadn't even been on the road.  I learned some new descriptive words that morning.

Two more of these leaks developed over the next few days but she seems to have got on top of it since then and has had about 5 consecutive days of no flats.  Long may that last, bikes in bits on the balcony were disturbing my equanimity.