Integrated, welded ones yes. I have hefty ones bolted on wooden risers on the fibreglass deck but in bad swells, pitching through 1.5 metres (as Wrack was, two nights ago), I don't trust them. So ditto: old hose and worn out cotten t-shirts.

"The more I repeated these routes the more I hated the place I had moved. The stench of the canal, the soggy leaves underfoot in winter slippery and hateful, the dark passages I had to navigate to leave my flat."

If ONLY we were travelling...

We're looking at having to replace a couple of feet of sapele gunwhale capping thanks to a nasty, mistral-driven swell and our warps snatching badly. We've wrapped/wadded two or three old cotton t-shirts around the doubled bowlines to ease the pressure on the timber.

I envy your steel boat.

I hve them fitted elsewhere aboard. But right now, I can't afford to eat let alone buy chandlery.

It's less chafe than heavy duty downward pressure on wooden gunwhale caps as the boat snatches at the bowlines. .75 of a metre swell in the marina, the boat pitch through maybe 1.5 metres. Cracked a length of sapele.

It's really got to cushion the wood. Thus thick winds of old t-shirts or flannel.

Quite.

"I found God at a gas station in Nissedal
Now I’m siphoning gas here in Niflheim
There’s a radio tower on the heath
Amongst the cows with their GPS trackers"

"By now you will be an international advocate. You will monitor 200 trials, hoping it will all get better. But fascism doesn’t need much sleep. When it’s too late you’ll see that you were not creative enough. You weren’t armed to the porcelained teeth or in league with deep state."

It's snowing just 60 miles from here — on the west coast of Sardinia.

(I hate snow.)

"I’m not useful like a carpenter or plumber. I sit alone
on veranda steps, gaze at the evening sky.
Neighbors are quiet; the road to the village is empty.
The moon set an hour ago."