Wednesday 3rd Helen is away in Birmingham relative sitting this week. I am dog sitting in Poole so relatively free to organise my own day around the tides and the sailing club rally to Wareham Quay due at the weekend. Today I managed to deal with the last excuse for not sailing.
Now that I have organised the anti-wrap line on the mast I spent most of the morning having a fight with a reluctant roller reefing system as the slider was jamming when I tried to hoist the Genoa. After around a dozen attempts and with rather un-subtle addition of lubricant, I finally managed to get the slider all the way up the foil even with the sail attached. With the anti-wrap line tight, the roller reefing now works and I was able to put away the Genoa before going back ashore.
Am I ready? – There will still be some sorting out below decks needed before I can stay overnight aboard but at least I should now be able to sail part of the way across the harbor on Saturday before motoring up the river.
Saturday 6th July My plan earlier in the week was to be on the rally to Wareham. It would always have depended on whether last week’s attempts at getting the reefing working and the gas cooker in service had been successful. At least I already knew everything needed about the navigation having done the reverse after the launch and gone on many walks along the river.
Today’s forecast reckoned on 30km/Hour winds (force 5) which certainly seemed rather too much for a first solo sail on an unfamiliar boat. Instead ended up waiting for the dog medicine to arrive and then going to New Milton to check the bungalow was ready to be handed back to the landlord.
After lunch it was still quite windy so looked to me as if it was a good decision not to go on the rally today. I am not sure at the moment but the lack of posted photos from the rally may indicate nobody else went to Wareham either. Tomorrow is supposed to be calmer so I may go sailing then instead.
Thursday 11th
As with the rest of this week my day was taken up by working on the extension to the house. As I got finished today I realised I had time to go to the chandlers and the deposit had been returned for the rented bungalow. So I now have a replacement echo sounder which has the same TV antenna connection as my old transducer plus three wires to connect – That shouldn’t take much more than half an hour to do and test tomorrow. At the same time I will unload some of the other bits of stuff needed for me to eventually exist overnight on the boat. There is a lot of crockery, cutlery and campling saucepans from the caravan so I will need to be selective and make sure that what goes on the boat is functional, works for 2 or 3 people on the boat and can be stored sensibly in the existing lockers.
Friday 12th Today’s lowest tide is at 9:08 and by 12 it should be deep enough that I can get to the boat by dinghy. I packed up working on the house and headed for the boat at 3:45. The tender had gone a little floppy but that was resolved via a couple of minutes pumping. I took the bag full of plates and other non-perishable kitchen items. These are not put away yet but are at least on the boat so I won’t need to remember them when there is any potential that I am staying on the boat overnight. I also included some zip lock bags with semi-perishable items like teabags, sugar and muesli.
The first job was to test the sounder with the existing sensor – One of the features of the NASA sounders is that they use the same ultrasound frequency range as the old Mariner set that was previously fitted and are able to use the original transducer and cable if it still works. Substituting the display did indeed work in so far as I get the expected “no echo” alert with no transducer and it was replaced by a 1M depth indication when the cable is connected. It therefore seems that the old transducer works. I then drilled and cut out the required mounting holes and properly installed the display on the starboard side with the cables all in the electrical compartment there. I haven’t yet set the gain profile or calibrated the display to show depth below the keel (roughly 0.8M offset needed). It is reassuring that the display after fitting shows a little more tide had come in since the original test. 
The second job was to tidy up the pilot berth space a little. And finally I measured the Genoa to identify how much UV protection strip needs adding to cope with roller furling (30 cm adding to the leach and 6 cm to the foot should give enough overlap to protect the furled sail from UV light damage). I then set off home and arrived at about 6:45.
This evening I found out that the blog website has been suspended so I couldnt post this update. – There is no indication of a reason but it turned out to be due to a server change and the addition of secure communication with the website ( for those not familiar with such things that means the URL starts https:// instead of http://).
Thursday 18th I returned to Poole this afternoon and collected Lexie & Helen from the beach. Lexie had been having a good day at this point as she had enjoyed going in the sea, snoozing in the shelter on the beach, a doggy ice cream and then me coming back from Doncaster.
7:45 pm About 10 minutes into Helen’s band rehearsal Lexie’s good day ended very abruptly as she had some sort of stroke or cardiac event. She basically slumped off the back seat of the car with fully dilated pupils. I got Helen out of the band practice and we set off for an emergency vet 16 miles away. On the journey we realised there was no longer a heart beat or breathing.
 Take me with you. |
 Patiently waiting for ‘her time’ while I am working. |
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Saturday 20th Today I woke early with the intention of going sailing, possibly around Brownsea Island or towards Wareham. Everything was going well until I arrived at the club and discovered that I didn’t have the pump for the tender and the two rear tubes were a little too soft to be able to row. The problem was not solved by returning home to check both sheds and anywhere else the pump might be so I had to buy a replacement.
Having pumped up the tender I started to row out but the previously successful superglue repair on the starboard oar lock decided to break at about the second stroke. Fortunately I had the other repaired one among my stuff in the boat and could swap the broken one for the spare fairly quickly and then row out to the boat.
Meanwhile there had been a Watsap post about the mast crane barge which is still up against the wall fairly close to my boat’s mooring. A member had reported there was a problem but he didn’t have time to fix it and didn’t say what the problem was. Most of the members who would have been involved in repairing it were away on the club’s cruiser rally to Weymouth so I volunteered to go and investigate. From the photo that was posted it looked as if the jib had fallen down and when I got aboard that proved to be the case – The hoist wire had corroded and frayed, probably where it is in contact with the pulley sheave at the top of the mast. I could have done a repair using the copper ferrules left over from my rigging replacement job which were on the boat but the crimping tool was at home.
After a Watsap discussion we have a working party for Wednesday to repair or replace the cable. As this is lifting gear it is likely that we will replace it as the club needs to have a certified cable. With that in mind I removed all of the broken cable and on my return to shore have left it on a workbench where it can be checked and the correct length replacement bought.
It was now well after 11:00 and the ebb tide starts to take effect at 14:00 so I need to be back on the mooring by then. Rather than heading out into the harbor in a steadily increasing wind and with heavy rain or even thunder forecast for later, I did a few more of the jobs on the boat. By 11:45 I was ashore and heading home for lunch.
Wednesday 24th The mast crane repair team met at 10:00 to bring the barge in to the pontoon . 
I got the basic launch instruction from Andy C as we set out to release the barge from its moorings. That ended up being done by Karl and I while Andy was trying to collect the battery angle grinder which we thought we needed to cut a couple of the shackles free.
The mast crane repair escalated fairly quickly once we were moored to the pontoons. As well as replacing the broken cable we ended up taking down the mast so we could drill a new hole for the mounting shackle. The original was a tab welded onto the top plate but the hole for the shackle pin had enlarged over time and extended to within 3 or 4 mm of the edge so there was a significant risk of further failure. A new 12mm hole was made and the whole thing lubricated and re-assembled. We finally finished tidying up by about 4:00.
I then set off to drive to Norwich ready to spend the next three days helping the older daughter to move house to Ipswich.
The sailing opportunities for the rest of July were completely blocked by a combination of building work on our bungalow extension and my wife having a somewhat stroke like episode during a Band summer school followed by 3 days recovering in hospital at Yeovil. 
First posted 3/7/24 So finally we have something posted here on the day it happened.
Updated 20/7/24 after I got reconnected following the server changes. Final update posted 4th August.