We were back in Poole late on 30th September. and spent the first few days sorting out the house after being away for the whole month.
Friday 4th There were two boats needing their masts taking down today in preparation for the first lift out on the 16th – I arrived at LSC at the same time as one of the first boat’s crew. The owner of the other boat was a few minutes behind and he rowed us both out to his mooring which slightly closer to the entrance than mine. We got organised for his mast removal and then rowed the 30 feet or so across to the mast crane barge.
Both mast removals were completed OK and after a little tidy up we rowed back to the club. I set off home at about mid-day. The afternoon was spent working on the bungalow extension again.
Late in the afternoon some waders arrived which I had ordered online so I am now organised ready for the Mudfest on the 19th.
Today’s other piece of LSC news involved a request for anyone with bricklaying experience to help with laying concrete blocks next week. 100 blocks should arrive on Monday and the 40 foot container should be on Thursday – It is intended to put it on top of 2 rows of blocks. I have offered the use of our cement mixer if needed to mix mortar on site although I cannot transport it in the car. Hopefully that will not be taken as meaning I can and will place all 100 blocks unassisted. I do have the required tools including the laser level so I can certainly help.
Saturday 5th. 
During a shopping trip for compost & a new planter I got some Creocote and expanding foam from B&Q. The Creocote is to protect the blocks and wedges that I have been preparing ready to support Rathenice in the yard once she is lifted out. It took a while to get the first coat on these because there are a lot of them – Several different block thicknesses as well as multiple sets of wedges with differing thickness and taper.
I also found both of the mast supports and have painted all of the bare wood using some of the blue paint left over from the trailer. That should help prevent any rot or swelling of the wood over the winter.
Monday 6th My delivery of a batch of wood and OSB from Jewson’s arrived at 8:15 this morning so I can continue with the roof construction. That arrival meant I could head for the sailing club and arrive at around 9:00. The blocks for the container arrived at around 9:30 while we were experimenting with removing parts of the concrete base from the old engine shed and a decision was made that we could lay them directly on top of the older concrete. That meant I headed back to our house to collect the cement mixer and the laser level. Arrival back at LSC coincided roughly with an improvement in the weather so we were able to commence the task properly.
The cement mixer lead let us down after the first test run by creating massive sparks and tripping the breaker. The first suspicion was that it might be wet and I ended up opening the socket and switching system to check them and attempt to dry everything out. That did not resolve the issue but did indicate there was nothing obvious wrong with the mixer. The problem was eventually traced to damage further along the lead and a quick re-wire of the waterproof socket resolved the issue. There were no further problems with 2 batches of mortar.
The block laying was done by another member and one of his work colleagues. He is a builder by profession and owns the boat next to mine in the line of lagoon moorings. The rest of the team tended the mixer and moved blocks around. Our laser level was a massive help in achieving millimeter accurate levels at least at the time of laying the blocks.
We created 3 of the projected 5 sets of supports and had decided that the other two were not really needed. This meant we made far more progress than had been expected and are already completely ready for the arrival of the container on Thursday.
After we had packed everything away and cleaned up the yard, most of the team went home. I then set up my tender again and left it near to the slipway so I can easily use it to get out to the boat later in the week to either get a quick bit of sailing or take down the mast ready for the lift out.
Thursday 10th 
Fortunately today’s BBC weather forecast is acknowledged to be total rubbish- Some sort of IT glitch borrowed Florida’s real conditions and has them predicting a hurricane for the UK .
The container was delivered around 8:00 so we did some tidying up and moved all the concrete waste, tender storage etc.
Once that was finished I went out to the boat and did all the work necessary to take down the mast. I am now almost ready for lift out, just need to check the outboard and put in the second strop positioning rope. Headed home again at 2:15. After the rather grey start It has turned into a nice sunny day so I rather felt I should have gone sailing instead of taking the mast down.
Monday 14th After lunch I did a bit of boat shopping (rope to pull through the strops and two long mooring lines as tag lines for the lift) then went out to the boat to finalise the lift out preparations . I now have 4 fenders ready, two tag lines / mooring lines ready in the locker and the outboard has been started and run to clear out the excess oil in the carburetor.
I then rowed ashore with the two sail bags in the tender – They will need re-stowing before the winter because I did a rough fold and roll pack while on the boat. As it had been raining shortly before that both of them are likely to be damp.
Wednesday 16th First lift out. According to the schedule we should be doing 27 boats today starting at about 6 am. It had been raining overnight so the yard and parked boats were wet to start with.
The crane arrived just before 6am and got set up fairly quickly while I helped assemble the spreader frame and chains. From 6:20 onwards the first few boats came out reasonably easily but after around 8 of them we reached a stage where we had to wait for boats to come in from outside the lagoon. It was still rather dark at the time but eventually everything got going again.
For the first half of the session I was mainly dealing with lifting strops or tag lines and I was busy enough to not take the opportunity of taking any photos.
Apart from one monumental rain shower it stayed acceptable weather. That shower was hard enough to mean we couldn’t see the wall from the shore and I got absolutely soaked with the water running off the bow and down the tag line that I was controlling. Something like 4 inches of water was in the cockpit when we got the boat down on it’s blocks.
Around mid morning Karl and I went out to recover a boat that belongs to someone who is currently away on a yacht charter in the Mediterranean. This one is now lined up alongside the “Baker” pier ready for the start of tomorrow’s lifts.
Helen eventually arrived to help with the catering having been delayed for about an hour by having caught a bus which went a very round about route (the 60 instead of the 40 I think).
She managed to do her bit though having put Willow in Karl’s van along with Remmy. The two of them seemed to get on reasonably although they were both rather doing a “What have you put me here with this for?” impression at least to begin with.
I lost count but we are fairly close to today’s target of 27 boats out – One was definitely not done because it has it’s mooring lines somehow tangled with the prop but a couple of others have been done which are not on today’s list. This photo is of the last of today’s lifts which was taking place at 11:20 .
We were home around 2pm after a burger and a bacon roll for lunch at the club.
Thursday Second lift. Should be 22 boats and two barges lifted out today and the forecast is better than yesterday. As far as I can tell we achieved everything we intended this morning but I haven’t actually counted the boats. The dredger barge was lifted out for a clean and antifoul session and the currently active launch was lifted out at the end to get it’s lower rudder pintle repaired – The metalwork between the keel and rudder is completely rusted away, the pintle fitting on the rudder is missing completely and the other two pivots are badly worn. What remains of the bracket is a very thin piece of bent metal that has been bent back by the water flow sometime when the launch was put into reverse.
Karl has the measurements and will be putting something together this afternoon and tomorrow. He is away next week so the plan is for me to collect the creation on Friday afternoon / evening then hand it over to Martin for completion and fitting. The aim is o have the launch back in operation for the mooring work next week.
Saturday 19th
This evening was the date for the lagoon mooring working party (otherwise nicknamed Mudfest). I was all organised to participate and arrived at the club around 3:45 armed with waders but also bringing the partly completed rudder bracket for the launch. There seemed to be general consensus that getting the latter project finished was more important than having one more participant in the mooring work.
The pintle required it’s mounting straps bending a little so it fitted onto the rudder and we added four stainless steel bolts to attach it to the rudder. The holes in the straps lined up with the holes left from the previous one.
After a bit of work with an angle grinder to flatten off the internal weld, the trough fitted the deadwood and it turned out that the holes Karl had drilled in the tabs on the starboard side also lined up perfectly with the existing wood. So I drilled the other side through the deadwood and we could bolt the bracket on with 8mm bolts. That allowed us to mount the other half of the hinge in it’s proper place and line up the pivot pin properly.
We then got another member to use the welding equipment at the club to attach the two stationary pieces of the bracket (his welding is much better than mine). This was then painted with two coats of zinc paint so it will be ready to fix permanently once we have obtained a pair of 120 mm long 8mm diameter stainless steel bolts and nuts – We cannot get those before Monday morning so the launch will potentially be at high tide around 12:00 .
The hull has also been cleaned and antifouled while the launch was ashore on the trailer. That maintenance was not anticipated being done before ‘lift in’ next year.
As a consequence of the work on the launch, I didn’t get involved with the mooring work apart from helping bring tools and chain ashore from the end of the pontoon pier when they had finished. However, I have already volunteered to help with the work on the deeper water moorings and there may need to be another work session on the lagoon moorings too.
Monday 21st There was a team getting masts down this morning from 9:30 however I was still involved with fixing the launch. This went slightly slower than planned because the 120 mm long bolts turned out to be too long and had to be replaced with 100 mm ones.
While I was waiting for the bolts I managed to clear out the remains of the piece of rope that had got around the prop shaft and into the cutlass bearing housing. This was fairly slow work because the innermost part of the rope had melted and formed a shell around the shaft which had to be broken into pieces to come out. 
Once we had the right bolts it was a fairly quick job to fit the fabricated part and get ready to launch.
Thursday 31st Third lift out day at LSC. I arrived there at 5:45 so was involved in setting up the crane and rigging the spreader system as well as the lift in of the “dredging” barge.
After that we were off to a reasonable start as soon as boats started to arrive in the lagoon. Having done about 10 lifts Karl sent me out to collect Rathenice from her mooring. That went reasonably well to begin with however the tide was falling from it’s first peak. 
This had been predicted to be 1.9 M above datum at 8:00 falling to 1.5 M for the hold. Nobody seemed to think it actually got that high because boats ahead of me were all unexpectedly getting stuck even when they knew where the channel is (That is probably because of the high pressure today).
I got held up in the queue and drifted aground between two mooring balls but was not really all that stuck as I could still rock the boat from side to side but wasn’t able to move out of the mud under my outboard’s power. The launch managed to get me moving and so I ended up lifted out at about 10:30. The rest of the boats in the queue had to wait until the second high before they got lifted out. 
The last lift was about 1:15 and everyone from the reserve list got a spot – Massive thanks to all three lift masters and everyone working to get boats across the lagoon and safely airborne.
I am now fairly closely packed in with another row of boats between me and the access route to the slipway.
Most of Rathenice’s bottom got scraped before I headed home.
I ended up leaving the bits between the keels because there was a large puddle under there and I didn’t fancy lying down in it and all the weed, barnacles and other sea life piled up underneath. I will clean that up next time I go there and also recover my mooring strops and pickup floats. Once that is done my tender can come home for the winter.
First posted 11/10/24 Updated 14th, 16th, 19th, 21st & 31st.
Tidal graphs https://easytide.admiralty.co.uk/?PortID=0036B – © British Crown Copyright, 2024. All rights reserved.