Sunday dawned bright and calm. Despite retiring so early the previous evening, it was getting on for 5:30 when I awoke - eight hours sleep is very unusual for me, like Jane I seem to sleep better on board than in my bed at home. The usual "breakfast" of coffee and cigarettes ensued and further reading of a not terribly good historical novel until by getting on for 08:00 I was getting bored and decided to make a start on some light and above all quiet tasks. I didn't think scrubbing the accumulated muck from around the stanchion bases would disturb the slumbering crews of the adjacent boats but it seems it didn't go unnoticed! It was a light hearted dig though, not a moan! On the other hand, the wake boarding boat that turned up with the ghetto blaster blaring loudly and shouty crew didn't go down so well and the crew of Janner (a sweet gaffer which is on my growing list of boats to drool over) intervened and got them to kill the noise - it apparently went down like a lead balloon but as it was still well shy of nine in the morning it was not an unreasonable request.
Heather, not my sons girlfriend but the lady on the boat next to me, came up with a brilliant idea of laying Brigantia against the pier next to the slipway in order to reach the top of the mast. Conrad, her other half, suggested we might be able to careen her over by enough although I had my doubts on that score but I did reckon that if I pushed my luck on the tide at the bottom of the slip the eye might just be within boathook range.
Thus was born Plan #D and I headed over to the pier to scry out the lie of the land only to find that Periwinkle, the pretty little gaff dayboat that lives on a buoy near the pontoon, had beaten me to it in order to re-attach his jib halyard which had parted from the masthead. No matter, I reckoned the tide, which had just turned, needed to ebb for another hour or two before I'd stand any chance of reaching my masthead. I helped David off Periwinkle sort out his problem and then toddled back to the pontoon to bring Brigantia over to the slip.
I knew that there was a 50/50 chance I'd not get off again but I was slightly surprised to run out of water before I was even fully alongside the pier. Close enough though to reach the ladder nd safe as houses as the concrete slip extends well beyond the end of the pier, the question now was would I be able to sort out the problem? David had stuck around planning to return the favour but as it seemed there was nothing to be done he headed off with the offer of a pint later when the pub opened.
Lashing both our boat hooks together got me within three feet - damn! Oh for those various nefarious bits of ally pole we'd turfed off the boat into the shed at home a few weeks previously! Conrad, Heathers other hald, came over to see if he could help and proposed using a section of ladder which was lying around on the pier. I think he was a bit disgruntled at my reluctance to act on the idea but I couldn't see how it could be tackled safely and I don't trust lengths of ladder left lying around especially if they have wooden rails!
A trip back down to the pontoon on a blagging mission added Janners boat hook to the lash-up and, with a bolt lashed onto the end to make a suitable hook I either exhibited supreme skill or, more likely, got lucky in hooking the eye splice with the wobbly contrivance in a matter of seconds. What a relief!
Borrowed boathook returned to it's rightful owner, I headed up to the pub for a very welcome pint with David and Ava in the hot sunshine. The breeze was most welcome for cooling but I now faced the prospect of sitting out quite possibly the best sailing day of the year so far high and dry. Never mind, plenty to do.
Resisting the temptation of a second pint, which would have almost certainly put paid to any further activity that afternoon, I clambered back down onto the boat with view to sorting out the genoa halyard. I need to reverse the halyard and lead it through the diverter block which, after a bit of head scratching, one coffee and two cigarettes I worked out, after nearly getting it fatally wrong, was a simple two stage operation.
Lowering the genoa onto the foredeck, I stitched the end of the genoa halyard to the line I'd rove around the diverter block (before I knew what it was) and hauled that line back around the halyard block ending up with the genoa halyard on deck and the spare line following the desired route. Swapping ends, now all I had to do was haul the halyard back around the blocks with the spare line and hey presto. Re-hoisting the genoa, I took a test pull with one hand on the furling line and the genoa disappeared as if by magic -no more two handed full blooded heaves required. Most excellent!
Rolling up my trousers and removing my socks, I sacrificed an old pair of shoes to plod around in the thin mud covering the slip and scrape off the worst of the weed. Seems the antifoul is keeping anything significant at bay and the weed came off easily enough. A couple of other people commented that it seems to be a bad year for weed growth and Brigantia is not the only yacht on the moorings to have developed a green beard!
Inevitably, coffee and a smoke break intervened before I tackled the next job on my agenda - refitting the fiddle block that acts as a turning block to bring the main halyard and topping lift back to the cockpit. We'd pulled the rather feeble padeye it was shackled to out of the handrail when we tried to hoist Mark up the mast, most fortunately when he was only a few inches off the deck. I'd put the padeye and screws in a safe place so inevitably they were nowhere to be found. Doubtless they'll turn up one day but meanwhile what to do? Luckily, I found two spare suitable padeyes in the port cockpit locker ... OK, so they were screwed to the boat but what they were for I can't imagine. Without further ado, I removed one of them and screwed it to the handrail using rather longer screws - it really ought to be bolted through the handrail, or better still the deck, but as I had no suitable bolts screws will do for now.
With the padeye in place, t'was the work of but a few moments to re-attach the fiddle block and reeve the lines back to the cockpit. I'm still not happy with the setup at the mast base - there are cleats all over the show but every single on of them is either the wrong size or in the wrong place! I was also annoyed to discover that I'd led the fall of the genoa halyard down the crowded port side of the mast instead of the starboard side which is occupied by nothing more than a flag halyard. That's easily sorted, drop the genoa onto the deck, pull the halyard through to the other side and re-hoist. As a strong Easterly sea breeze had kicked in by now I decided to leave this to another day as I didn't want the genoa flogging against the rusty steel and rough timbers of the pier.
Time was marching on and I hatched a cunning plan to persuade Ian to drop our tender onto the buoy in passing - he was constantly busy all afternoon with everybody wanting to be out on the water. Looking downriver it seemed there was a wall of white sailcloth, I shall have to bone up on Colregs if we get more weather like that! Down to the tender dock I went to launch the dinghy and then onto the pontoon to try and catch Ian in passing. It was at this point I spotted that our buoy was now occupied by another small yacht which had been on the pontoon all weekend. Now what? Ian duly arrived with his last load of passengers for the day and inquiries were initiated.
All thoughts of devious plans now firmly in the background, I hovered around whilst trying not to seem too pushy as, whilst we've no rights to any specific buoy, the one we've been on is the second best mooring for a small boat like us - it's downstream of the pontoon and close to the bank well away from the main channel. It's an easy row in fairly slack water with a back eddy on the ebb helping tremendously. In short, I don't want to end up at the far end of the moorings a long way upstream (the only place I could see any vacant buoys).
After cashing up the days takings, Ian got the binocs out and had a look around. He agreed to move the offending yacht onto a vacant buoy upstream on his way to run the dory back round to the marina where it lives at night. My offer of assistance was declined so I returned to Brigantia to start tidying up and offloading what needed to go home into the car. By 18:30 the water was lapping around the bottom of the hull and I reckoned there was enough water to reach the stern in the tender which I duly did with minimal embarrassment - I'm getting slightly better at rowing in a straight line although the dinghy does seem to do some strange things. It suddenly turns sharply for no apparent reason at times and take a dozen or more strokes of the relevant oar before it responds and comes back on track. I might be tempted to put a deeper keel on it over the winter to try and improve the tracking. Anyway, that done I started tidying up below decks reckoning I had about another hour at least to wait.
To my surprise, she was afloat by 19:15 when I'd reckoned it would be gone 20:00. The Easterly breeze had dropped and the tide wasn't running too strongly to I decided to go for a simple reverse out - a precarious business on Brigantia as experience has shown on several occasions. I like a challenge though so gave the outboard the beans and somewhat to my surprise and slightly impressing the spectators, she backed off the slip into deep water and came around as sweet as you could wish for.
Motoring down past the pontoon, I slipped across astern of Pauls Heard 28 (drool droll) and lined up for our now properly vacant buoy. Wind and tide were both in my teeth with the wind just slightly quartering so conditions were almost ideal for a single handed pick up. I'd planned to pick up from the cockpit and walk the tails forward but I set her up so neatly that I ended up all but parked with the bow about two foot away from the buoy and it was the work of moments to nip forward and grab a tail with the boathook.
Secure on the buoy, I killed the engine and even remembered to take it out of gear for once! All that remained was to tidy up the lines, put her to bed and row back to the pontoon. Oh and of our interloper, well Ian had saved himself the bother of towing her all the way back up the moorings and dropped her on the yellow buoy close inside of ours. Trouble is, that buoy is on the mud at low water springs! I suspect it won't be there next weekend.
With the flood running still, it was easier to row up the outside of the pontoon to land the dinghy as close to her hidey hole as possible as dragging the damn thing around one my own is not my idea of fun. I hauled her up on to the dock when David off Periwinkle happened by and gave my a hand to maneuver her into her space. I don't know what other tender docks are like, much the same I suspect, but one of my few niggles at Fambridge Yacht Station is that the tender dock is nowhere near big enough for the number of moorings and is cramped and crowded making moving your tender around on the dock a lot harder work than it could be.
Anyway, by now it was nearing 20:30 and time to hit the road. With a brief stop at the usual services for coffee, and a sandwich when I realised I hadn't eaten anything since having a brief snack late morning, it was a decent run back home in just over two hours.
It's nice to return home having actually reduced the number of items on the "to do" list for once! The only niggle is that in m haste to make haste when she floated earlier than expected I forgot to clear out the cool locker. The bacon will just go off in its packet, the bread will go mouldy and the margerine will melt but it's the remains of the bottle of milk that worries me. Hopefully it'll just fester in the bottle but if it leaks ... yuk! It's be a big worry if we weren't back on board on Friday
Add one item to the "to do" list - a departure checklist. Oh, it's already on the list, better do it then!
Oh yes, photos .. I took a few although not many but then left the camera on the boat. Doh!
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