The day started in glorious sunshine and hardly a breath of wind. Still a bit chilly but then it is a still early in the year! Glen was in no rush to surface so after a coffee I hit the showers which left me feeling much less jaded and ready to get on.
First up this morning was getting the boom and mainsail back where they should be. Apart from not being able to find the track stop which stops the mainsail luff bullets from dropping out of the bottom of the track this went well and the new mainsheet runs bueatifully
Next on the list was intended to be the Genoa. However, all that nice new string on the mast was making the furling line look shabby so we nipped off down to Burnham to buy some string and other things. Back at the boat, I had a first crack at making an eye splice in 3 strand rope which wasn't entirely successful. The end result was functional but not pretty!
By the time we'd got the new furling line on the drum, the breeze had got up and time was getting on so we decided to leave the Genoa in it's bag for now and crack on with solving a slight problem with the new engine installation. The problem being that the new engine, unlike the old beast, doesn't stay put in the straight ahead position. I didn't want to fix it permanently because it is possible now, with the revised installation, to get a fair bit of engine steering in both directions.
The solution was to turn the existing jammers for the tiller strings through 90 degrees and tie a length of 6mm line to the engine tiller hand bracket and lead it to the jammer. Hey presto, the engine can be locked in any desired position or allowed to turn freely. A new set of jammers now needed to be installed above the existing ones for the tiller strings. These are better jammers for the job and better positioned than they were so this little job was a double bonus win win :-)
Time was a marching on and so were the rain clouds so we set to clearing up and packing our kit away in the car. Caught our friendly neighbourhood tender dock space thief in the act and apprised him of my firm resolve to hang on to pole position on the dock! All was done in a friendly atmosphere but I am determined to keep hold of the space we've got!
Fired up the engine second pull and this time allowed it to warm up for a couple of minutes before setting off. Zoom! I don't think we need to worry about a lack of oomph!
The buoy we had been on now being occupied by another boat, I drooped onto the next available buoy upstream. As this, and all the other buoys I could see, had no strops on it, I got alongside it and temporarily tied stern to with a mooring line whilst I rigged our own strops which I'd retrieved from the depths of a cockpit locker.
That done, I walked the buoy forwards to the bow and made fast. All that remained to be done was to stow away the mooring lines, stop the engine and turn off the fuel, lock up (fortunately remembering to retrieve the perishable grub from the perishable grub locker!) and row myself back to the tender dock.
Annoyingly, I realised later I'd forgotten to bring the fenders in. Oh well. The rain started as we drive out of the car park - perfect timing!
An uneventful run home and thus ended this session of jeering ready for the season.
First up this morning was getting the boom and mainsail back where they should be. Apart from not being able to find the track stop which stops the mainsail luff bullets from dropping out of the bottom of the track this went well and the new mainsheet runs bueatifully
Next on the list was intended to be the Genoa. However, all that nice new string on the mast was making the furling line look shabby so we nipped off down to Burnham to buy some string and other things. Back at the boat, I had a first crack at making an eye splice in 3 strand rope which wasn't entirely successful. The end result was functional but not pretty!
By the time we'd got the new furling line on the drum, the breeze had got up and time was getting on so we decided to leave the Genoa in it's bag for now and crack on with solving a slight problem with the new engine installation. The problem being that the new engine, unlike the old beast, doesn't stay put in the straight ahead position. I didn't want to fix it permanently because it is possible now, with the revised installation, to get a fair bit of engine steering in both directions.
The solution was to turn the existing jammers for the tiller strings through 90 degrees and tie a length of 6mm line to the engine tiller hand bracket and lead it to the jammer. Hey presto, the engine can be locked in any desired position or allowed to turn freely. A new set of jammers now needed to be installed above the existing ones for the tiller strings. These are better jammers for the job and better positioned than they were so this little job was a double bonus win win :-)
Time was a marching on and so were the rain clouds so we set to clearing up and packing our kit away in the car. Caught our friendly neighbourhood tender dock space thief in the act and apprised him of my firm resolve to hang on to pole position on the dock! All was done in a friendly atmosphere but I am determined to keep hold of the space we've got!
Fired up the engine second pull and this time allowed it to warm up for a couple of minutes before setting off. Zoom! I don't think we need to worry about a lack of oomph!
The buoy we had been on now being occupied by another boat, I drooped onto the next available buoy upstream. As this, and all the other buoys I could see, had no strops on it, I got alongside it and temporarily tied stern to with a mooring line whilst I rigged our own strops which I'd retrieved from the depths of a cockpit locker.
That done, I walked the buoy forwards to the bow and made fast. All that remained to be done was to stow away the mooring lines, stop the engine and turn off the fuel, lock up (fortunately remembering to retrieve the perishable grub from the perishable grub locker!) and row myself back to the tender dock.
Annoyingly, I realised later I'd forgotten to bring the fenders in. Oh well. The rain started as we drive out of the car park - perfect timing!
An uneventful run home and thus ended this session of jeering ready for the season.
If you're going to write these on the Note you really should read before updating!
ReplyDeleteI do and then i still end up with loads of typos :(
ReplyDeleteAlso, having problems uploading photos from the Note to the blog so I've deleted them for the moment until I work out what's going wrong