Alan’s Law explained

Every engineer is familiar with “Sods Law” or “Murphy’s Law”as it is known in USA. Put simply it says if it can break or go wrong then it will - mostly at the worst possible moment. There’s plenty of engineering in a cruising boat so we are well versed in this law but we have another which as far as I know is unclaimed by Murphy, Sod or anyone else so I’m claiming it- here’s Alan’s law, it’s about wind and goes something like this.

If you want to go sailing there will either be no wind or a howling gale.

If you want to sail to somewhere in particular there will either no wind or a lovely wind - coming from exactly where you want to get to I.e, on the nose.

If for any reason you can’t go sailing e.g waiting for parts to be delivered, then there will be a lovely wind from the perfect direction to take you where you wanted to go before the damn thing you need parts for broke.

You may dear reader note the merest hint of frustration in my explanation of Alan’s Law. The forecast showed good winds to the North of here but flat calm from Brest down to Lorient and we were sick of taking a perfectly good sailing vessel and using it as a pretty poor motor vessel. If you were designing a motor boat it wouldn’t have a long keel, a 20m mast and a huge weight in the keel to keep the 20m upright but the total lack of wind over the last month means that is just what we’ve done. So we took the decision to have the parts sent here - 10-12 days from Tasmania and hang out here for them.

But the damn forecasters got it wrong and the lovely winds from the perfect direction moved south and have been rattling the rigging for the last 2 days and will for two more. We could have sailed every nautical mile to Spain never mind Lorient.

But then we would have missed the 400 yr anniversary celebrations of the French navy taking place here and the big Bastille day fireworks on Tuesday. Oh and then the lovely walks through Conservatoire Botanique and the fish, seafood and…….