Maintenance Week - Report

Well that went well ... I don't think!

What should have been four solid days of major works above and below decks turned into a case of making modest progress against all odds and ended in virtual survival mode

For a change, I decided to travel down early Saturday morning rather than late Friday afternoon. Hopefully, this way, I'd get a decent nights sleep at home to ease the increasingly difficult transition from night shift mode to some semblance of  normality. Mind you, only a vague semblance at that since I was up before dawn, shopping in Tescos by 05:00 and on the road before 06:00!

The weather wasn't looking terribly special but the drive down went well enough. The entrance to the yacht station was a very large and deep pond (it was definitely too grown up to be a puddle) so I backtracked and made my way in to the yard via the pub car park.


Brigantia looked none the worse for her winter of neglect and I was pleased to find no damp or mould to speak of below decks. Happily, the rain was holding off and I was able to get the sprayhood refitted and the cockpit tent up in the dry even if it was a little chilly. Without further ado, I hooked up the mains electrics and fired up the fan heater and the mains kettle I'd procured on the way down (having forgotten the one I'd meant to bring). The one would be running almost continuously for the next three days, the other nearly as often!

The Cockpit

I then set about reinstalling the batteries and firing up the electrics. Crucially, I got the bilge pump running to pump out the water standing in the well under the cockpit (of which more in a paragraph or two).

By this time Glen had arrived and we set about the first task on the job list which was to free off the jammed cap on the log impeller housing. In the process, I chucked the cockpit floor down to the ground in what I intended to be a controlled manner only for Glen to point out that it had gained a crack in the plywood and lost none of its manky awfulness in the process.

So, after applying the appropriate tool to the cap and removing it and having disconnected the bilge pump, Glen and I proceeded to chuck half a dozen or so buckets of water down the well to flush it out. Just as we fnished this job, Rik made his entrance and the crew was thus fully assembled.

We now set about the new additional task of making a new cockpit floor. By happy chance, Glen had donated two 4'x3' sheets of 12mm ply which I'd put on the boot floor before loading the car. Extracting one of these, we used the old floor as a templated and cut out a new floor with the jigsaw. A circular saw would have been better but apart from one wobble it wasn't too bad a job. The wobble went away when we test fitted it and found that particular edge needed trimming back a bit. Luck!

Next, we cut the hole in the middle of the floor to take a new table leg mount and after a light sanding slapped a coat of varnish over the topside and edges.. Due to the weather, however, it never would get any more varnish and ended up coming back home with me (and as I type I've just realised to my annoyance that I've left the varnish on board so can't finish the job at home now). It needs more varnish and probably painting as well I think and then I need to acquire a bit of new vinyl to stick down on top of it and while I'm at it I'll fit a lifting ring. It'll then be a posh cockpit floor instead of a horrible one!

Rigging Matters

I now set about the next phase in my long term project to renew, modernise and organise the running rigging.

The latest phase has involved replacing the fiddle block shackled to the handrail with a four gang deck organiser and the pair of cam cleats on the cabin top with a pair of Spinlock double jammers.

The old Barton wire kicking strap, which was fairly knackered and couldn't be adjusted from the cockpit, has been ditched in favour of a pair of fiddle blocks giving a 4:1 purchase with the (currently 10mm but ought really to be 8mm) line brought back via the new organiser to a jammer.

The locking bolt on the gooseneck has been replaced with an eye bolt to which is now attached a 2:1 tackle forming a tack downhaul. This too is led back to a cockpit jammer. The purpose of the downhaul is to allow the gooseneck to ride up to the top of the wide part of the mast slot when reefing - the alternative is that the bottom couple of luff bullets end up dropping out of the slot. The spin off benefit is the 2:1 purchase which will help control mainsail luff tension (although with the new main I'm assured this won't be an issue)

Due to the inclement weather, I never actually made more than a token start on the additional equipment needed to fly the cruising chute. I still need to fit the sheet blocks at the stern quarters, the tack block on the bow and the stanchion fairleads for the tack line. I also need to look at the cleating arrangements for both the genoa furling line and the new chute tack line and sort out "storage" cleats for the genoa sheets.

Boarders will now be safe for ever more

Meanwhile, at the stern, Glen set about a job that has been outstanding ever since we bought the boat - making the boarding ladder fit properly! This involved cutting down one of the legs to fit the slight curve of the transom, drilling a new bolt hole and then re-securing the whole affair to the boat. A lovely job he did too. The ladder is now rock solid when stepped on which is a good feeling!

On my radio

I'd crudely chopped the signal wired to the VHF radio in the rush to remove the gear at the end of last season and Rik now set about reinstalling the unit but with disconnect-able connectors on everything to save trouble in futrure.

Due to my cryptic and cunning technique of leading totally misleading and technically inaccurate cryptic notes on the NMEA wiring lying around on the chart table he got the wiring wrong and had to de-solder it all.

Due to my last remaining brain cell having a hangover, I got the re-wiring wrong and he had to de-solder ti all ... again. We then used some common sense and buzzed out the connections from the GPS socket and on the third attempt got the GPS talking to the radio again.

And that was just about that ...

Apart from some minor odds and ends, that was all that three of us achieved in two whole days. We were, it has to be admitted, in the pub and on the beer very early on Saturday. Technically, it was probably still afternoon when we abandoned ship! It was warm. There was beer and food. There was live-ish music. We were quite merry.

We all felt a bit the worse for wear on Sunday morning! (Some of us worse than others he mutters darkly). Eventually, we stirred our stumps and I bought everyone breakfast up at the Roundbush before we headed down into Burnham for another visit to the chandlers. There being little prospect of much progress on the major jobs, Glen headed for home shortly thereafter whilst Rik and I carried on with what we could do in the conditions.

Survival against all odds ...

Well perhaps I exaggerate slightly but it was pretty bad! Monday I mean. It dawned with the gale howling through the rigging, the hull resonating to the vibration of the mast and snow carpeting every flat surface. After that, it got worse!

By lunchtime there were icicles hanging down off the cockpit tent and the temperature was actually dropping. It was clear no progress would be made today as even the below decks work such as a new cabin floor or lining out the aft under-berth lockers would necessitate putting gear outside out of the way and working outside to cut wood to fit.

Given the scarcely improved forecast for the morrow we very reluctantly decided to call it a day at lunchtime and baled out via a pub lunch.

Jane and I plan to return on Thursday, assuming an improvement in the weather. Looking at the forecast, there is at least a chance we might be able to get the antifoul on over the coming weekend. Come what may, we certainly won't be launching this Friday as planned!

Oh and finally my apologies for the lack of photos. Conditions were not conducive to photography anyway and my phone died (the nice people at EE couriered a replacement to me at the pub on Sunday evening which was quite impressive although I pay through the nose for the insurance that covers it). I'll try and remember to take some pics of the finished rigging work at the weekend