New year, new ??

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PhillM

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For Paean - roller reefing and perhaps new winches. At a stretch change to single line reefing.

For me - waterproofs that work and perhaps some boots too.

Ambition: Single hand cross channel and perhaps as far as La Rochelle. Mind you the last time I set an objective (remember passage to Poole some years back) everyone else made it may times before I eventually did and by then the "in company" boat had firmly sailed!

Happy New Year everyone.
 
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Get Avy-J's refit finished (or at least, get her fit for sea), launch her and visit Spain, Portugal, Morocco on the way to her new base in the Canaries.

Take Fairwinds either North and maybe to Shetland/Norway or South to Ireland.

Stay alive and vaguely solvent.

- W
 
New instruments. Probably get an instrument upgrade (plotter, radar, AIS) at SIBS, the last big ticket items post refit. Unless the engine craters in 2019.
 
For the boat - a Copperbottom. I have finally found somewhere who charges a sensible amount and does the job indoors.

For me - as long as I keep breathing I am happy.
 
Ummm, busy one.
The bradwell 18 needs new trailer rollers and mudguards, it's illegal at the mo. Then brought down from Scotland to maryport and get bethfran loaded up and driven down to Essex. She needs a new keel uphaul, probably a dyneema one; A scrub off, Gas's cooker replaced, autohelm and chart plotter installed; New washboards, deckpaint replaced, ob serviced, running rigging replaced and bottom rudder pintle fittings replaced.
Then go and explore the swatchways, poke up the Thames into the city and explore across to Kent in her, maybe across channel from ramsgate.

Then there is the real work to be done on the longbow. Headlining removed, and replaced with pine cladding. Instruments removed and the entire boat rewired, then some instruments repositioned. Stripped out and painted on the insides, toilet pipes all replaced. Steering cables replaced, new rudder bearing, new morse control lever and cables. Hot water system sorted and working, water tank emptied and cleaned, wallis heater serviced and all conduits replaced. V berth changed to be a proper bed. All teak and wood cleaned and oiled. And if I manage all that, she can get back in the water!
 
I will probably have rather less time this year than last year, but we will have to see what the year brings. May be joining a boat that's going to the Baltic for a week or so, and hopefully Aphrodite will be cruising both in the Solent and further afield. Depending on what happens with B*****t (and on the wind direction) I would like either to take her up to the Isles of Scilly and possibly up round the Bristol Channel, or east towards Holland. The ideal would be to make it to the Frisian Islands, but it's quite a slog there and back from the Solent with a limited crew in the relatively short time I'm likely to have. May have to content myself with less ambitious cruising generally! There would be a certain satisfaction in cruising around the Gower Peninsula, where the boat was built back in 1975—not a special anniversary year but certainly quite a while ago...

In terms of maintenance and modifications, I'm hoping that the new upholstery being prepared by a friend of the family will finally be ready for this season (was originally supposed to be delivered in August, but one doesn't like to chase!). I would also really like to fit some kind of wind vane steering, but budget makes a sensible commercial one prohibitive, and I've now run out of time to design something over the winter... we'll get there eventually. Refit the cabin side-lining (around the bunks) with proper adhesive, now we've got the sizing right... looked great, briefly, until it sagged and fell off! Continue war against leaks: have now reglassed much of the anchor locker bulkhead, which hopefully might have caught the leak into my cabin there (sleeping bag got wet last time we went hard upwind, which was admittedly 24h into a F5-6). Have now made a second, hopefully more successful, attempt to seal a leaky stanchion base... I have procured a 'new' fibreglass lid for the lazarette, so now hopefully both sides will seal properly and the amount of rainwater in the bilges will be reduced! If I feel sufficiently energetic, I would also like to rewire the switch panel, which I suspect was last done by somebody with experience less in wiring than in cooking spaghetti: it's horrible! That said, it works, and I am loathe to waste sailing time in fiddling with that sort of thing... I enjoy electronics, but not sitting in a boat battling with wires! Would also be fun to get HF radio installed on the boat (more for amateur purposes than genuine GMDSS use), though I think I will not be installing acres of copper grounding or anything as fancy as that. I do have a massive steel plate through which the keel bolts go, though, which might suffice with enough transmit power...may also have to upgrade battery bank :)

I would also like to repaint the insides of some lockers and beef up the backing pads on one of the shroud chainplates.

Of course, the sets of what I would like to do and what I will do may be entirely disjoint...
 
Boat is out for the winter, stbd engine back in having been removed for access to sort out a small leak from the transom shield area, so all in all I would love a repeat of last summer weather wise, covered nearly 700 miles, which may not sound much but for a solent based twin engined petrol sportscruiser is pretty fair. No mods, ran like a swiss watch all season with old technology carbed V6's..
Same again please....with a handful of new places to try.
 
For the boat - a windlass just need fitting and wiring (lol at *just* as if its a small job) no more manually hauling up the anchor

hopefully before the season starts;

- fresh anti-foul & Eng service
- new anchor
- fix that stern deck shower which none will ever use if i ever can be bothered

for me...

Isle of scilly this year, i am determined to have a crack at it, fingers crossed for nice weather
 
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