I am still spending at least half of each week working on the house in Doncaster as well as heading towards moving house on the south coast. The Doncaster house is almost ready to be rented out so I should soon be able to do some sailing.
The plan for the next week or so is to extend the mooring strop at the bow and then fit fairleads at the bow and stern to help cut down the potential for chafe in future. I will also finally get the fore and aft rope fitted to connect the two mooring strops and help with picking up the mooring. That group of jobs may even get started on the 1st if the weather is on my side.
Having recently fixed the broken forestay, I also want to replace the bottlescrews on the shrouds and forestays, get the second mast bolt into the tabernacle, adjust the length of the backstays so they can be tensioned and then set up the rigging correctly. Alongside that, a few minutes work will get the Genoa reefing line re-installed so I will finally be ready to hoist the foresail and go sailing.
Friday 1st March We were woken by heavy rain and strong winds so no boat work attempted today or on Saturday.
Sunday 3rd My parcel with the bottle-screws and fairleads was delivered at 1:58 so I went to the boat.
First job was to re-install the glued oar pivot on the tender yet again. That was a partial success as although the glued plastic broke again, the stainless steel binding worked so I can still use the pivot to row gently out to the boat.
Quite a lot of water in the cabin so I turned on the bilge drier pumps and left them to drain what they could. Then bailed out the cabin floor into the galley sink. There is still water under the floor because the pickup (and possibly the float switch pull up resistor) doesn’t work on that one. I need to bring my test meter and look at that next time I go out.
The big job was to slacken off all the standing rigging one shroud at a time and replace the old bottle-screws with new ones. That allowed me to move the mast base towards the back of the tabernacle but not quite far enough to get the bottom bolt in place. 
The bottom mast bolt can now go in at a slight angle from either side but needs about 4 mm adjustment before it can go straight through. That may be because of the ridges at the edge of the flat section of the mast so the easiest thing will be to drill out the two sides of the tabernacle about 2 mm towards the bow.
For now the two forestays and both sets of shrouds are done up fairly tight and the lock nuts secured. All the other rigging adjusters are now somewhere around half of their available length range however this change hasn’t removed all of the slack in the backstays. These will both need shortening a little and their new bottle-screws installing. I could probably have done that this evening but there was limited time left before sunset and I still had to row back ashore and pack up the tender.
Saturday 9th This morning’s plan is for me to go to do some work on the boat so I was there around 9:00 (about half an hour after high tide (2.2M). There was quite a bit of breeze so it was an interesting row out to Rathenice as the tender was crabbing quite a lot with the cross wind from the south east.
I started by trying to get rid of the water in the cabin and under the table. Neither of the pumps in the locker wanted to prime and while looking at why it was discovered that the middle section pump has lost it’s inlet valve and spring and that the other pump had lost it’s spring – Very obvious really when you find two springs in the water at the bottom of the compartment. Replacing the spring in the top pump means that the locker is now almost empty of water. I can’t find the missing valve part so the other pump will need replacing.
The moral of this story is that dismantling the pumps to remove junk causes problems. I would have done much better if I had not initially run them without the stainless steel mesh that now keeps lumps out of the pumps.
The next job was to slightly shorten the backstays and fit the remaining two new bottlescrews. That involved cutting out the original eyes and re-making them with the backstays about 10 cm shorter. They are now tight (although not yet secured using the lock nuts) but the mast still doesn’t seem to be upright as the starboard backstay touches the pushpit and the port one doesn’t. I also still need to drill out the tabernacle to get the second mast mounting bolt to fit – I think the tabernacle was designed without allowing for the ridges at the edge of the flat section on the aft side of the extruded mast.
The third job was to fit the roller reefing line which took about five minutes.
There was slightly more wind to deal with during the row back to the club but still achieved fairly easily even though the most recent oar lock fix has re-cracked. Back ashore and the tender packed away by 12.
Saturday 16th Today’s plan was for me to collect the bunting that has been made for the campsite in France. This was a fairly easy journey as it was daylight and there was a lot less flooding to deal with than the last time we went to see them. I collected the bunting and was home again by about 12:30. During the journey Helen had called me to say that one of my mooring buoys had been recovered from floating around in the lagoon and would be in the engine store with a new shackle.
After lunch I set off to the boat to sort out the problem which was easily dealt with and this time the shackle is properly moused as I was also left a length of wire to do it. This one shouldnt come undone for a while.
While I was at the boat I also pumped out the bilges again with the bilge drainer – The engine compartment and the main locker were emptied reasonably easily but the under floor area pump is still in pieces so no impact on that area.
I also replaced the “weighted” rope that joins together the various mooring strops. That will make re-mooring easier when I take the boat out again.
17th to 21st were entirely dedicated to working on the house trying to get it sufficiently ready to have the carpets fitted on Tuesday 26th.
Saturday 22nd Tonight is the LSC “launch party” in preparation for the first lift in on Tuesday.
Tuesday 26th There are 21 boats to lift in today and 4 to lift out for their maintenance. I need to help on this day as we are away for the other two. There are also several mast crane operating days that need volunteers.
I have decided not to be lifted out as I haven’t even sailed Rathenice yet so a quick scrub (or two?) while aground in the lagoon should be enough to keep things working for the season.
As there is a low tide at around 6 this morning and we are all requested to be at the club around then. Many of the folks will be getting their own boats ready to be lifted and of course the available team will potentially be being depleted somewhat as the day goes on and more boats are out on moorings.
As required, I arrived a little before 6 so helped to set up the crane for the boat lifts. We were off to a good start with me helping on tag lines for the first 5 boats going in and one coming out. At that stage we were about to go on to handling the somewhat larger boats so I went out to the mast derek barge with another club member who is an expert operator.
Having shortened the mooring chain a little we were ready to lift masts and attach rigging as boats formed an orderly queue. By the time the tide was falling enough to stop the lifting in process, we had raised the mast and assisted in attaching the rigging for at least 6 boats, possibly 8 as both of us had lost count. Even as a trainee I managed to avoid a couple of problems as boats had tangled rigging or missing VHF antennas which could be fixed during the lift.
Karl has found me a replacement / spare oar for the tender which may or may not work with my oar mountings. He has also found the oar mounts from one of his previous dinghies which look reasonably similar to what is on mine.
I set off for home at just after 11.
Wednesday 27th The parcel with my 9 cm M5 bolts and associated nuts & washers arrived today. Sometime before the end of the month I need to go out to my boat to attach this year’s Poole harbor dues sticker and maybe spend an hour or so drilling the larger holes for the mast bolts and attaching the fairleads. It was fairly windy today so probably not the best day to be doing that. We also have a yellow warning about high winds in the Poole area tomorrow so that may be something that has to happen next week regardless of slightly challenging conditions.
Saturday 30th March There are mast crane bookings 9:30 – 11:30 today which I was going to help with however my older daughter’s holiday travel arrangements coupled with railway engineering works over this Easter weekend mean I am now doing a complex trip from New Milton towards Gatwick airport and then to Norwich. I will be there for a two days finishing off her kitchen install and starting to get her ready to move into rented accommodation for her Next phase of training.
Sunday 31st March Mast crane bookings 11:30 – 13:30 but, I will be driving back to Doncaster to do what I can towards finishing the house there and getting tenants in.
First published 17/3/2024 Updated 16/6/24 after a manic couple of months.