Yes! We are officially back in commission.
Mind you, it's been another expensive day to get there. First problem this morning was the flat tyre on the car. Found a bloody rivet in it, probably picked it up in the boatyard. I thought she felt a bit twitchy on the way back from Felixstowe last night so it was probably losing pressure the whole time I was out
No time to muck about today, it was on with the emergency spare and I'll sort out the duff Tyre later in the week (the weather takes a turn for the worse by Friday). Meanwhile it was down to Marinestore at Burnham and lo and behold, they had a NASA Clipper Duet in stock. If they'd answered the damn phone it would have saved me the wasted trip to Felixstowe yesterday not to mention £26 plus the diesel.
I also bought some new galvanised rowlocks and a pair of decent oars for the tender (we had a look at the finger berths in the marina yesterday and decided to stay on the swinging moorings) plus a cheap plain blue burgee - a yacht doesn't look right without a burgee and now I've sorted out the burgee halyard ...
Back to the boat and within the hour we had a working depth sounder and log. We also had a burgee stuck at the masthead jammed at the wrong angle and refusing to come back down. That, I decided, could wait. We dashed up to the showers to freshen up and shortly before two we were off down river with the ebb under our tails.
The new outboard got it's first workout and, well, it works! It's not perhaps as quiet as I'd hoped and we need to tackle the vibration transfer but otherwise it does the job. In extremis, I think we'll be a knot or so slower than before but we'll be burning less than half as much petrol!
Talking of petrol, a fairly exiting arrival into the fuel berth at Essex Marina (one shot at it, miss and the tide will pile you into a load of moored boats!) and 25 litres of unleaded went into the tank and Jerry can for which we paid an entirely reasonable £36 (not bad at marina prices)
Fueled up, we set of again down a very choppy river. A stiff-ish Easterly breeze working against the ebb tide made for quite bouncy conditions. We were soon round the corner at the Branklet buoy into the much quieter Roach
With, I hoped, just enough wind angle to make it go, I unfurled the Genoa, got her on the wind and killed the engine. With the tide now against us, she was just making headway so it was up with the main as well and even though it wasn't setting that well due to the need to ease the gooseneck down the mast so that there's enough luff tension she was off like a scalded cat!
Had to put one tack in but a couple of helpful gusts and some dinghy style pumping up to windward just got us around the bend where we could ease the sheets.Eventually we ended up goosewinged with the wind right up our chuff. Forty five minutes under sail and it was on with the engine again, down with the sails and we motored into the Yokesfleet, a tributary channel off the River Roach. We dropped anchor at quarter past five.
An hour later, the sails were stowed, the decks clear, the anchor ball hoisted and the sausage and mash was on the stove. After dinner I did a bit of fishing with a boathook tied to the main halyard and managed to retrieve the pesky burgee. A modification to the halyard attachment and this time it went up properly. It didn't set very well and it looks like the cheap bit of tat which in truth it is but it'll do for now.
Coffee with rum in it and choccy cake for pudding has given me an excuse to put off doing the washing up (Jane cooked so I've got to wash up, Brigantia rule no. 1 is that) but I've just put on the kettle to get it done. Then it'll be a quiet night. If there's a good enough 3 mobile signal we might stream a film on the laptop.
I'll need to let out some more anchor warp later before retiring. We're on 10m of chain now in 2.5m of water but with a 4m tide that will be a bit tight around high water in the early hours so I'll run out another 10m in an hour or two
Note: this post has been delayed by a poor phone signal!
No comments:
Post a Comment