Reality

"Coasting" didn't win an EPIC award, but that's all right. It made it to the finals and perhaps "The Sapphire Sea" will do better next year.
We've survived the first open inspection of our home and looked at possible replacements without success. Building standards have changed over the fifty years since our home was built, the rooms are impossibly small and the whole thing is built with an eye to cost rather than quality.
I sound like an old man, but that's all right too, because I am.
It's about time I claimed the privilege's of age. I've become far too aware of the downsides this past year of illness.
All that aside, I'm deep in research for the beginnings of the Caribbean Odyssey begun with "Home is the Sailor". My immediate source is a book I bought in a second hand book store in my early teens. First published in 1927, it is a biography of Sir Francis Drake. Written in a very scholarly fashion by an E.F.Benson, it was an immediate favourite of mine because of its dry humour. The fact that it was undoubtedly cheap helped at the time.
Benson quotes many contemporary sources and suggests compromises where they conflict, always based on his assessment of the characters involved. I can remember laughing out loud at some of his conclusions when I was young and they are just as amusing now. This is not to challenge their probable rightness but to appreciate the wit with which they were expressed. I would have enjoyed sitting in a pub with Benson and talking about Drake, adding my seaman's insights to his scholastic knowledge.
A brief experimentation with the Cornish dialect and I've fallen back on hinting at it while writing the dialogue in modern English like the rest of the book. This is the part of writing I enjoy most, the broad outline of the story is clear in my mind and I'm just building the details into it.
Bon voyage!