Last week we took poor little Lunar to the kennels, jumped on a plane, and headed to Jersey for some lessons. I felt a little under prepared in terms of the theory - especially my weather knowledge - and so was cramming during the flight across (all 25 minutes of it!). I shouldn't have worried. Our preparation and experience really paid off, and as well as learning a good deal, we also both found that we'd be doing things right for the last year or so. So back in Plymouth now, complete with Dayskipper Practical (Rose) and Yachmaster Coastal (Me) course completion certificates, we're feeling a lot more confident about what's ahead. We're also much more aware of what might be in store.
Despite on occasion a 'rough' sea state, poor visibility, winds to force 7, rain, drizzle, squalls and low temperatures, we'd managed to get from Jersey to Guernsey to Dielette to Granville to Iles De Chausey and back to Jersey again. Just under 150nm in total. Four hours of it at night. Brilliant!
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Can't recall if I mentioned this in previous posts, but before we went away I was getting more and more concerned about our rigging. It had been replaced professionally last year - but since being replaced had introduced a judder in the mast when the wind blew in certain directions. The riggers came back 3 times and "tuned" it, but in the end gave up saying, "some old boats just do get mast wobble in some winds". Which is odd as we'd had NO wobble before, and at the time we had it any time there was any wind at all really - and they also had left a very slight 'S' in the mast (when looking along the mainsail track from below, with eye against mast - otherwise invisible).
Mast wobble reportedly is a bad thing which can lead to work hardening of the mast - potentially eventually leading to a catastrophic failure - so I had to do something. I did find a way of hoisting ropes and winching halyards which did seem to stop most of it, but it took a god 10 minutes to rig up/remove each time we wanted to go out in the boat - and was definitely less than acceptable.
With much trepidation I finally bit the bullet and decided to have a go at tweaking it myself.
Five minutes later the slight 'S' in the mast was all but gone, and so was the juddering. I slacked the babystay completely then took off 3 turns from the backstay then ~2 each from the cap shrouds, finally bringing the babystay back up to tension once more. Probably a 2mm maximum length change in any of the wires.
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Another mini triumph before we went to Jersey was the upgrade and installation of a 40 Amp charger. Our 20A charger, finally, came back to the installers. Sterling had replaced it with a brand new one. So the installers were happy to simply charge us the upgrade price to the next model up, a substantial 40A charger. Much more capable of dealing with our now quite large battery bank.
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And that brings me up to date. Here I sit in Sutton Harbour for almost the last time. Tonight we shift to a temporary berth, then tomorrow we're off to Yacht Haven Quay for a night on their pontoon - then the day after that we're to be lifted out for a couple of weeks while we sort out a rope cutter, new stern gland, anode, antifoul, etc, etc, then we're off!
Here's a couple of pics. First one is the new 40A charger which took me about 12 hours to install (not really sure why!) with our wind generator controller to its left, second is _some_ of our battery bank (fourth and final battery is behind the bulkhead, at the left - I think you can make out the cables going through to it. Not pretty, but it's secure, and it works.
