Bru
Well-Known Member
What a great weekend! Me and "1st Mate" Rik met up at Fambridge Friday afternoon and with some trepidation rowed the tender down to Brigantia's mooring (the "I've got a Seagull you can have which ran OK x years ago" Seagull being as dead as a dead thing can be). Fired up the smoke machine ... oh, we're not at a gig so ... I mean the outboard and motored the hundred yards or so up to the pontoon. Test Rik's attempt to repair the Lowrance fish finder and as expected it too was dead. Ho hum. Beer and Grub
Saturday morning run up to Seamark Nunn's 'cos they'd got some bits we needed anyway and had put a Nasa Clipper Duet by for us in case we needed it. Hammer the credit card and back by lunchtime. Rik fitted the Nasa unit while I got on with swapping the dodgy forestay shackle. That took a while 'cos in the end I had to disconnect everything else to slacken off the forestay enough to fit the shackle so it was back to square one setting up the rig. Meanwhile, Rik had the depth sounder side of the Nasa up and running, the log impeller will have to wait until the timing is right to dry out for a couple of hours 'cos drilling a 42mm hole in the hull in several metres of water didn't seem a good idea.
Late afternoon and the big moment - bending on the sails. Had some trouble with the reefing gear but thought I'd got it sorted. Main went up fine although we're going to have to sort out the reefing setup. Grub and beer.
This morning, Rik carried on with the bridge deck fit out project he started yesterday which will house two 85ah leisure batteries and the boat tool kit on the lower shelf and emergency gear / boat essentials on the upper shelf. I fitted the new water filler replacing the old cream crackered one and did some sorting out below decks. Around "lunchtime" (coffee and several chunks of chocolate) there was a nice breeze and the sun was out and we'd got sails on the sticky up thing in the middle of the boat so we tidied up the maintenance kit, offloaded most of our gear to the cars and went sailing
Nothing too ambitious, just gybing and tacking up and down the moorings reach. Made a bit of a mess of things a few times, got it right a few times, all part of the learning curve. Didn't hit anything and didn't go aground and at times we were clocking up to 5 knots on the GPS and generally getting somewhat over 2 knots over the ground downwind against the ebb tide which impressed me no end. Still problems with the furling gear which meant Rik had to go forward and unwrap it from around the bottom of the foil, where it had chosen to wrap itself rather than around the drum and then re-wrap it onto the drum. I fear I hadn't left enough turns on the drum when I sorted it out yesterday, we'll see what happens next time.
By about 4 we were creeping back up the North bank of the river when it occurred to me that we were a> running out of time and b> heading straight for our mooring. What the hell, nothing ventured, nothing gained - furled the genoa (which took far too much effort for my liking heaving on the furling line - need to look at the setup of the stanchion blocks and fairleads - but furl it did) and ghosted up to our buoy with the main just drawing. Rik grabbed one of the buoy tails with the boathook, took a swift turn around the samson post and I dumped the kicker, hauled on the topping lift and eased the the main halyard in less time than it took me to type it. Bloody hell, we'd sailed onto our mooring on our very first trial sail! Might not have been textbook but it worked
Put a harbour stow on the sails, shut down and switched off everything and with the last few bits of gear on board Rik had a crack at rowing the tender back to the pontoon - making a better job of it than I had on Friday although it pains me to say it.
Delighted with how well she sails. Seems nicely balanced and quicker than I really expected on all points of sailing. The crew need to smarten up though and as for the skipper ....
If the weather continues like this all summer it's gonna be a cracker ... and I must remember the factor 30 next time 'cos I'm a wee bit sunburnt and it's only flippin' April!!
Saturday morning run up to Seamark Nunn's 'cos they'd got some bits we needed anyway and had put a Nasa Clipper Duet by for us in case we needed it. Hammer the credit card and back by lunchtime. Rik fitted the Nasa unit while I got on with swapping the dodgy forestay shackle. That took a while 'cos in the end I had to disconnect everything else to slacken off the forestay enough to fit the shackle so it was back to square one setting up the rig. Meanwhile, Rik had the depth sounder side of the Nasa up and running, the log impeller will have to wait until the timing is right to dry out for a couple of hours 'cos drilling a 42mm hole in the hull in several metres of water didn't seem a good idea.
Late afternoon and the big moment - bending on the sails. Had some trouble with the reefing gear but thought I'd got it sorted. Main went up fine although we're going to have to sort out the reefing setup. Grub and beer.
This morning, Rik carried on with the bridge deck fit out project he started yesterday which will house two 85ah leisure batteries and the boat tool kit on the lower shelf and emergency gear / boat essentials on the upper shelf. I fitted the new water filler replacing the old cream crackered one and did some sorting out below decks. Around "lunchtime" (coffee and several chunks of chocolate) there was a nice breeze and the sun was out and we'd got sails on the sticky up thing in the middle of the boat so we tidied up the maintenance kit, offloaded most of our gear to the cars and went sailing
Nothing too ambitious, just gybing and tacking up and down the moorings reach. Made a bit of a mess of things a few times, got it right a few times, all part of the learning curve. Didn't hit anything and didn't go aground and at times we were clocking up to 5 knots on the GPS and generally getting somewhat over 2 knots over the ground downwind against the ebb tide which impressed me no end. Still problems with the furling gear which meant Rik had to go forward and unwrap it from around the bottom of the foil, where it had chosen to wrap itself rather than around the drum and then re-wrap it onto the drum. I fear I hadn't left enough turns on the drum when I sorted it out yesterday, we'll see what happens next time.
By about 4 we were creeping back up the North bank of the river when it occurred to me that we were a> running out of time and b> heading straight for our mooring. What the hell, nothing ventured, nothing gained - furled the genoa (which took far too much effort for my liking heaving on the furling line - need to look at the setup of the stanchion blocks and fairleads - but furl it did) and ghosted up to our buoy with the main just drawing. Rik grabbed one of the buoy tails with the boathook, took a swift turn around the samson post and I dumped the kicker, hauled on the topping lift and eased the the main halyard in less time than it took me to type it. Bloody hell, we'd sailed onto our mooring on our very first trial sail! Might not have been textbook but it worked
Put a harbour stow on the sails, shut down and switched off everything and with the last few bits of gear on board Rik had a crack at rowing the tender back to the pontoon - making a better job of it than I had on Friday although it pains me to say it.
Delighted with how well she sails. Seems nicely balanced and quicker than I really expected on all points of sailing. The crew need to smarten up though and as for the skipper ....
If the weather continues like this all summer it's gonna be a cracker ... and I must remember the factor 30 next time 'cos I'm a wee bit sunburnt and it's only flippin' April!!
