Headsail repairs River Deben went aground, was this you?

J

jezjez

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Whilst enjoying the sunshine, a 32-ish sailing boat went round in circles trying to fix a headsail problem before going aground at about HW+1 on Sunday.
A guy was fishing in a 25ft motor launch next to my mooring and I asked if he was feeling gallant. He was, off he shot, then he came back wanting my tender. Off we both went, lines out and quadrupled up, got the yacht under a towline. This all took about 25 minutes. The yacht was by now sitting high and I thought, no chance.
However, East Coast mud to the rescue! With the motor launch dragging, he just slid through the soft stuff as easy as pie, hardly resisting.
My question is: what was going on with that headsail????
 
Could be anything from a lack of maintenance causing a jam in the furler or a riding turn on the drum, or more likely perhaps a passing seabird dropping an oyster shell into the works and blocking it.
 
Have heard of people doing circles to roughly wind in their head sail at sea , dont think it would be easy doing it in the deben though without running aground ... oh he did run aground...:oops:

Probably easier to just drop the genoa completely, hindsight is always easier though.
 
adamstjohn said:
Have heard of people doing circles to roughly wind in their head sail at sea , dont think it would be easy doing it in the deben though without running aground ... oh he did run aground...:oops:

Probably easier to just drop the genoa completely, hindsight is always easier though.
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But if it's jammed with a turn or two rolled in, then you can't drop it.

In similar circumstances I've had to go forward and manually unwind the riding turn.
 
Never happened to me, since our first furler in 1987. Smugness personified, I know, but I get so few chances to be smug these days.
 
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