What now?

Well the decision to call off the long weekend on the boat was certainly justified given the awful weather over Sunday and Monday.

I am, it has to be said, getting a bit fed up with how much sailing time we're losing to adverse weather conditions. OK, it is, to some extent, the nature of the beast and something that has to be accepted philosophically but only up to a point.

The March Maintenance Weekend was weather affected - although we managed to get the new engine in and the mast down, masthead refurbished and mast back up again as planned the working conditions were far from ideal and we lost most of a day out of the four days on board to high winds and rain.

The Rigging Weekend later in March went OK but was rain affected to some extent

I got in a couple of days sailing in April, including my first night sail, crewing on Sabre which doesn't rightly count towards Brigantia time!

The Scrubbing Weekend at the end of April had to be called off due to absolutely foul weather and that led to our having to lay out over £350 on having her craned out so that we could use what should have been our first sailing weekend as a maintenance weekend.

The "Yet Another Fit Out Trip" weekend in early May went well weather wise ... but only because we were ashore in the yard. If we'd been afloat on the pontoon or the mooring there were two days when the wind and waves would, once again, have made life difficult.

We'd have lost the first two days of the Spring Cruise to high winds if we hadn't already been ashore anyway. We lost most of the back end of the week to high winds. We managed just two days sailing, and even that was just pottering around on the river, and came home a day early.

Our next weekend on board was once again affected by adverse winds and rain. That was just a potter down to Burnham and back but it could have been more pleasant than it was.

Then we come to the big summer cruise. I had high hopes for the fortnight aboard with a committed crew. The first blow was Mark dropping out due to work. Oh well, perhaps it would have been a bit crowded with three aboard for that length of time anyway.

The first day out was characterised by a lack of wind, the second by too much of it towards the end of the day. Fair enough, so far. That's the way of it. Having to turn back off the North Norfolk coast in the early hours of the morning when conditions deteriorated and the forecast suggested it would only get worse was a bitter pill to swallow.

We then lost what could have been a reasonable sailing day by staying in port to recover from our exertions before setting off back Southwards only to be defeated once again by rising wind and building seas. A hairy, and if I'm honest probably ill-advised, entry into Southwold avoided ending up back in Lowestoft again.

Three days in Southwold was not part of the plan. Two of the three days we would not have been keen on going out to sea even if we hadn't had the damaged prop problem.

The second week was much improved though and we had conditions and days much closer to what one imagined would be our usual lot. Four decent, albeit relatively short, days saw us back to base at the end of the week.

Mark and I then had a weekend on board at the beginning of the month but due to my feeling a bit under the weather managed only a modest potter down river under sail and back on the Saturday. Bit of a wasted trip really.

So far we have only managed 14 days of actual sailing (and some of those have been short days) this year. Virtually every trip to the boat has been at least partially affected by adverse weather conditions. Totting up, we've arguably lost 7 or 8 potential sailing days due to high winds,

Even with a couple of weekends left in the diary, we are going to fall well short of the minimum 21 days sailing target this year. Of greater concern is how little time, as it turns out, Jane will have spent on board.

This is giving me pause for thought.

On the one hand, the received wisdom from experienced East Coast sailors is that this year and last year have been unusually poor weather wise. Hopefully, the cycle will be broken and we'll get a decent summer or two but with all the current concern about climate change (howsoever caused) is the current weather the shape of things to come?

If, and it has to be said it is starting to look like a big IF, we stick with Plan A. we're talking about shelling out over £2k on a trailer this winter. No question, in the long run, it makes both financial and practical sense to do so but only if we keep the boat for another three or four years minimum.

That outlay would certainly be followed by another big spend, probably next winter, on new sails. Again, worthwhile if we're going to get the use out of them but ...

So I'm now left pondering options and struggling to come to conclusions.

I really don't want to give up on the dream after just two years. However, I can't help but face the fact that we're spending a lot of time and money, and will need to continue to do so for some years to come, and currently not getting terribly good value for money from it.

We've got to get more use out of the boat to justify the costs.

Bloody weather

We've got a long weekend

Knock off in the morning, neither of us have to be back at work until Tuesday night

Yay! Let's go sailing ...

Well no, actually, lets not :(

Forecast for Sunday and Monday is bucket loads of heavy rain and F5/6 gusting F8 :O

I think not. So now it looks like we might take a drive down to the Southampton Boat Show on Saturday morning, find somewhere to stop over darn sarf on Saturday night and then spend the rest of our glorious long weekend on indoor chores at home

There are a couple of things I want to have a look at so the trip to the boat show isn't a total indulgence. I want to cast an eyeball over the Habitent cockpit enclosure for one thing. I think even the smaller size is going to be too big for Brigantia but at £360 it's a third of the price of having a custom cockpit tent made so its worth a look.

I also want to look at whisker poles and maybe talk to one or two sailmakers to get some idea the cost of new sails.

Not that new sails will be worth it if we never actually get to go bloody sailing!

Yours,
Frustrated of Fambridge

Charles Stock

Just heard the sad news that Charles Stock, author of "Sailing Just For Fun", passed away peacefully in his sleep last night.

His book was the catalyst that drew together my vague ideas about switching from plodding around in muddy ditches to sailing. His description of cruising the East Coast in a small boat inspired and guided many of the decisions I took in planning to buy Brigantia.

Sadly, we'll never now meet but his inspiring example will continue to show the way

RIP

August Weekend (2012) - day 3

It just occurred to me that I hadn't posted an entry for "today" (only a week later but I can change the date on the post to line things up!)

Very lazy start to the day, neither of us felt like getting up early so we didn't. After bacon buttys for breakfast, we spent some time going over the systems and equipment making sure Mark knows what's where etc.

Then we fitted the new galvanised rowlocks to the tender and Mark took her out for a row to get some practice in. He learnt the hard way that it ain't easy to make progress against the ebbing spring tide at the moorings!

I hopped in to try out the new rowlocks for myself and was pleased with how much more power I could get into the oars. I could, in fact, row nicely against the ebb although it was bloomin' hard work! Unfortunately, the woodwork to which the rowlocks are screwed wasn't up to the job and the port rowlock departed company from the dinghy.

Luckily, it landed inside the boat and I was able to paddle to the pontoon across the tide with one of the oar. Bloody nuisance never the less. Really, the tender dinghy needs to come home and have all the woodwork replaced, it's all fairly manky. Trouble is, I don't want to leave the space on the dock empty since it won't be empty when we return the dinghy to Fambridge. Then we potentially have an argument with whoever has nicked our spot which isn't my idea of fun. Or we end up with the tender in a hard to get at spot or worse still sitting in the water filling up.

I'll have to figure out a repair, even if it's only a temporary quick fix, before Jane and I go down in a few weeks for our long weekend. Unless we delay arriving until Saturday morning we'll need the tender to get down to Brigantia and we'll certainly need it to get back again on the Monday when the ferry won't be running.

Anyway, by this stage the afternoon was wearing on so we dumped the tender back on the dock and tidied up the boat before motoring back down to the mooring. A neat and tidy pick up with Mark on the helm and me on the bow (more practice for the trainee skipper!) was marred only by the motor being cut before I'd actually got one of the strops secured on the samson post. That left me hanging on against the aforementioned ebb tide and it needed another pair of hands to finish the job off. No harm done and he won't make that particular mistake again. To be fair, I think we need to work on our communication between foredeck and cockpit when picking up the buoy. Hate yelling backwards and forwards so some clear hand signals would be the order of the day.

A call to the ferryman saw us back ashore and in the car by about four of the clock and we hit the road back to sunny Northamptonshire.

Not the perfect weekend by any means. Lack of sleep before setting off coupled with feeling a bit off colour all weekend didn't help and I can't help feeling we should have done more somehow. Mark would have liked to have gone beyond the river which he has yet to do and if we'd been more energetic a trip round to Bradwell would have been feasible.

That said, we did make good progress on getting Mark up to speed so that he and Heather can use the boat by themselves. With slightly gritted teeth I've said I'm happy (relatively speaking!) for Mark to move the boat between the mooring and the pontoon and potter around on the river under motor provided he watches the tides closely and takes care. Sailing maybe not quite yet. There's a limit though to how much I can teach him before he's got to start learning it for himself.

August weekend (2012) - day 2

Now I come to think of it, it's the 1st of September today do this should probably have been titled "September weekend" but I've started so I'll finish beep beep beep.

Woke this morning to an overcast day with a working breeze from the West with some variable South in it. We got bacon butties out of the way then set off downriver with a fair wind but a very foul tide.
As the river wended it's way generally Eastwards and the wind veered and backed between South Westerly and Westerly we alternated between sailing downwind with the Genoa poled out and reaching. All the way we continued to make slow but steady progress downriver.

Eventually, by lunch time, we'd made it to Cliff Reach just upriver from Burnham and had a discussion about what to do. Mark was quite keen to press on out to sea and maybe head for the Blackwater but I felt it was already a bit late in the day and if we'd wanted to do anything that ambitious we needed to have made a much earlier start.

To add to my woes, I wasn't feeling all that clever. Whether it was last nights modest beer intake, a revenge attack by the roast duck or lack of sleep or some other cause is a mystery but I've definitely felt better!

With the tide set to turn in another couple of hours an excursion up the Roach would be mostly against the ebb and having ruled out the other options it made sense to put her about and head back upriver on the last of the flood.

Having thoroughly exercised the downwind sailing lessons learnt on the big trip a few weeks ago, now we put into practice the upwind techniques we've recently developed and honed. I'm delighted to report that we did so to good effect - such good effect in fact that for the first time we succeeded in staying ahead of all the boats chasing us upriver!

Nothing under sail overtook us at all. In fact, they didn't even get close. Result!

Arriving back at Fambridge, Mark was put in charge of bringing us alongside as a training exercise. He pulled off the manoeuvre without mishap albeit at a speed that had the erstwhile skipper jumping about quick smart to get a line ashore! Perhaps a wee bit less throttle next time my son!

The rest if the afternoon passed by at a doze. Happily, a snooze proved to be a sovereign cute for whatever had been ailing me and I was happy to repair to the pub for some scoff and a beer or three.
Time now for a nightcap before getting our heads down. We're not sure what our plans are for the Morrow, we'll play it by ear