Yesterday I experienced what everyone who has ever owned a boat must feel – that moment when the elaborate and expensive shed you have spent the winter accessing via a wobbly metal ladder reenters the water and comes alive.       

There is no choice but to watch patiently as precious tons of painstaking work is trusted to a Wiggins Marina Bull LoPro and two men who spend their working day moving large, expensive, cumbersome yachts as if they were babes in arms. To them my little boat was a simple job before lunch. to me it was a spell-binding and occasionally heart-stopping trial. I have watched it before, it doesn’t get any easier.

  In the past I have wondered how they felt aboard Ceres as she left Bideford having dry-docked at near-by Appledore. Yesterday I lived the answer.