Bonita is snug under her winter covers, and not much happens in the middle of winter, although I do try to visit her every week or so between family and other commitments. We have removed everything that can reasonably be moved ashore. The mizzen mast which sadly got split while trying to leave Brighton marina in the summer is now hanging up in my garage at home and is I hope, stronger than it was before.
Bonita's toolkit is sufficient to tackle most routine and emergency jobs afloat, and is kept in a waterproof box in the bilge to get the weight down. Some of these tools may well be as old as the boat and would probably have been familiar to the Crossfields. We carry no electric tools aboard. Probably the oldest and best are stamped to show they were made in Birmingham or Sheffield when Britain was the workshop of the world. These were the days when the best manufactured products were British or German ie. 'Bog standard' which is a phrase that has had a complete reversal of meaning over the years. Others were made in countries that no longer exist, such as Czechoslovakia and East or West Germany. The most modern are mostly Japanese or Chinese. Let's hope they last as well as their predecessors.