Most of September and early October were spent working on the campsite in France again. My arrival was delayed a little by yet another court case trying to get back the legal rite to let out our previous house in Doncaster. Helen had gone out by air on our original planned date and I followed by ferry 5 days later.
We came back to Poole on the Barfleur 6 days before her last crossing from Poole. As well as us, there are a lot of locals and others from further away who are disappointing this crossing to France will cease to operate.
October 15th I got a chance to go out to the boat and do some of the work that is needed before my boat comes out on this year’s second lift. At home the wind seemed to be gentle and there was some cloud but nothing obviously going to turn to rain.
I began by getting all of the mast mounting props out of the shed and putting those and the rolled up tender into the car. I was ready to set off by about 9:30.
On arriving at LSC it became clear that there were several boats that had not been taken out due to the slightly late arrival of the crane last week. Karl’s boat is still alongside the pontoon as are several others either left there from the last lift or early arrivals ready for the next. I also learned from a club member that the crane din’t have enough counterweights to be able to do our usual long distance reach and drag type process to quickly bring semi grounded boats in from beside the pontoon, therefore not all of the planned boats could be brought in as the tide had fallen. That will make for a bit more work at the start of the second lift.
By the time I had blown up the tender and rowed out, it became obvious that it was quite windy outside the lagoon. Fortunately my mooring was close to aligned into the wind. So some sail removal would be possible.
As I was starting to transfer equipment onto my boat I was hailed by a passing boat (Skimble) requesting help to get alongside the mast crane barge which is close to my mooring. They had been blown away from it at a first attempt to go alongside and were turning around for a more into wind second attempt at docking alongside.
I rowed across after they had successfully tied up and operated the crane while the three on board worked on the rigging and lashed the mast down. This took a little longer than usual because of the moderate wind blowing across the boat while we were working.
I then returned to my boat and removed the mainsail, boom and associated running rigging. When I tried to un-furl the genoa it became obvious that the “anti wrap” line had been chaffed through again which made it impossible to un-roll the genoa and lower it. I will need to wait for a less windy day to manually un-furl the sail and lower it. I have now added fitting either a thicker anti wrap line or something reinforced at the top to the list of jobs for the winter.
16th 
Today I took out the A frame and got the foresail off the reefing system. That was a little of a fight as it was still a bit windy out on my mooring and I had to manually unwrap the genoa from around the foil before I could release the haliard and lower the sail.
I decided it was a bit too gusty to try to bring down the mast today as I am still closer to the next boat than I would like for dropping the mast. The ideal situation would be to have the boat aground slightly skewed from the normal ‘in line’ position and lose to an into wind alignment. That will mean that the mast will not swing around as it comes down and ends up well away from the other boat’s pulpit which would otherwise potentially be closer to my stern than the length of the projecting mast.
I have ordered two crimp on end fittings and a length of plastic covered 3mm diameter stainless steel wire to replace the thin cord that I used as my anti-wrap cable. Hopefully this will be more resistant to chaffing and will last a few seasons.
First published 18th October 2026.