For most of April we are going to the camp site in France again as part of the team which sets everything up for their season. We actually leave early on Friday morning so there will potentially be a 3 week long gap in the boat related posts during April and another week at the end of May when we go back for half term week.
Tuesday 1st April
The tide today is at it’s highest around 12 and therefore 10:00 was a sensible time to be heading out to the boat to get ready. Unfortunately I left the A frame at home but did take all the tools that I needed to enlarge the bottom mast bolt hole.
Another nice sunny day although it was rather windy out in the lagoon. I managed to get the tabernacle holes enlarged to 18mm diameter using a combination of the step drills and the 18mm blacksmith’s drill. That took quite a long time because the stainless steel is fairly thick.
I then fitted the spreaders onto the mast and attached the shrouds and backstays to their bottlescrews. I still need to move the mast towards the stern and add the top bolt when I arrive tomorrow with the A frame.
One of the other boats was intending to put up their mast using the crane barge which is fairly close to my mooring so I rowed out the last bit in my tender and helped them. Once that was done the tide was falling fairly quickly after the first high so rowing back to the club was a good bit of exercise. Due to the strong cross wind and tidal outflow, my heading needed to be around 90 degrees off the achieved course almost all the way from the wall back to the longer pontoon.
Wednesday I was at LSC rather too early so had to wait for the tide to come in enough for the tender to float right beside the slipway. After getting the dinghy wheels into the up position, I rowed out to the boat initially with just about 6 inches of water in the channel. That definitely needed me to stick to the right route for the first bit of the journey.
Stage 1 of getting the mast up was moving it backwards until the top bolt hole lines up with the tabernacle slot. This needs to be done cautiously because the centre of gravity of the mast ends up somewhere behind the rear support. Then the bolt goes through to act as the pivot.
Stage 2 is setting up the A frame with the 4 fold lifting tackle going down to the anchor roller and the forestay coupled to the other end of the metal attachment plate.
Stage 3 is using the winch to gradually raise the mast while ensuring none of the bottlescrews get misaligned and rocking the boat to try to keep the mast reasonably centred.
Stage 4 was a temporary attachment of the inner forestay to its bottle screw using an extra shackle. The mast is now securely upright and the two bolts can be inserted and tightened.
Stage 5 was attaching the outer forestay to the bow fitting using the proper bottle screw then tensioning the rig enough to be able to remove the extension from the inner forestay.
The wind was quite strong out at the mooring but not as gusty as yesterday. Everything went reasonably according to plan and the mast was up with both bolts tightened and all standing rigging tensioned by about 11:30. I am leaving the boom attachment until after we are back from France in 3 weeks time.
Friday 25th April Today turns out to be our final day working on the campsite. The dog sitter was supposed to be looking after Willow at our house so Grace could go home to work her Sunday night shift however that all got cancelled as the sitter is off sick. We are therefore going home two days early.
Monday 28th April 
This morning I did a bit of tidying in the extension and then set up the sewing machine to add a patch where the mast lashing has worn through the sail cover. I also sewed the bag for my new winch & reefing handle storage in the cockpit.
Tuesday 29th I am heading to the boat to attach the sails and tidy up ready for the first trip of the season.
By the time the tide started getting limiting I had finished getting the boom and mainsail organised and was in the process of attaching the Genoa. Unfortunately I dropped my multitool on the deck and it bounced overboard. There is no other wire cutter or pliers on board at the moment so I couldnt install the securing wire on the slider shackles. The Genoa will now have to be done another day.
I was back ashore and home for lunch by just after 2.
Wednesday Today’s boat work was extending the two mast rests used when getting it down. That is rather in advance of the next lift out but it does avoid the possibility of me forgetting that I need to do it.
Thursday May 1st 
Today I managed to get time to go out to the boat and finish off fitting the genoa onto the roller reefing. Nothing else fell overboard because I had emptied my pockets before going onto the foredeck and also had 3 sets of pliers with me as a guarantee that I would complete the job.
Another member was having problems trying to get his mast up – First he ran aground outside the channel on the other side and needed a tow from a passing tender – Not enough outboard power so I rowed over and helped pulling him off the mud from the barge. After that I was involved in the mast crane operation.
I then tidied up on my boat and also managed to untangle the stern mooring strop from the rudder as it had somehow got wrapped around between the hull and the rudder blade again.
Friday May 9th Today’s activity on the extension doesnt really fit with the tides today but I should be able to get around 3 hours of daylight this evening to finish off the preparations for doing some sailing.
A nice comfortable row out to the boat at around 6pm and back afterwards got me an hour or so to install the gas bottle and get the burners working. That required filling the leak detector and using it to track down a slightly loose joint – Not hard as there are only the outlet from the bubble indicator and input to the isolation valve. The latter joint responded to an additional half turn of tightening and no further bubbles can be seen in the leak detector.
While I was at the boat I also tidied away some of the semi-random items around in the cabin and added the fresh fuel to the tank.
The stern mooring strop has stayed free from the rudder for the last few days so I am not sure what if anything has been different to the time while we were in France.
Food after the racing tonight was chilli so Helen and I stayed for a while after I had come back ashore.
Friday 16th Today Karl and I are heading out to Wareham with our boats. A 9am start is suggested because of the tidal situation but I have to take Helen to do the church toddlers session first. She was happy to be dropped off at around 8 so I could get to LSC on time.
I arrived a couple of minutes late but Karl & Remmy had also only just arrived and the continued high pressure meant there was limited water in the lagoon anyway. After organising all our stuff in the tenders we made coffees and waited for more water in the channel. The tide at LSC is just enough to get out of the lagoon and high tide at Wareham Quay is about 2 hours later so we can get to the wall before settling into / on the mud
We set off at around 9:15. I organised my boat and checked the cooling situation on my inboard engine – No go so I swapped to the outboard and set off out of the lagoon to meet Karl’s boat.
I am a little slower than Karl but we arrived in Wareham just before 11 so that was a journey of 10 NM (19km) in 105 minutes. To start off we had to raft up alongside the quay but eventually the power cruiser and tour boat all left and we could each bag a wall side place. That made it much easier for Helen to get on and off both boats as needed.
Helen, Willow and Dawn arrived at about 6pm after Dawn had been at work all day. Dinner was a barbecue on the grass opposite the quay. It was a rather noisy night because of the pub customers.
Saturday 17th 
Eventually everything quietened down but we were awake again at around 5am as the market people arrived to set up. The market was really busy which is not surprising as all the produce was really fresh and there was a variety of other stalls with usefull items as well as more touristy souvenier type goods.
Willow is settling down after initially being rather scared of the idea of getting on and off both boats. She seems to like the idea of having her own territory from which to watch the ducks and passing dogs.
During the afternoon we worked on Karl’s steaming light which had previously not been working – I am assuming there was a dodgy wire involved because there is no longer any indication of a problem and all his navigation lights are working.
Dinner tonight was a joint effort with me grilling sausages and cooking the sweetcorn while Karl’s boat were responsible for salad and keeping everything hot in their oven.
Helen, Dawn and the dogs went home around 9:00 leaving Karl and I to get the boats ready for the return journey. No real route planning needed but the tides are a potential problem going home as we need enough tide at Wareham to get down the river and then potentially have to tack a couple of hours waiting time onto the journey. I am the one who has most of the challenges as my boat draws around 0.8M while Karl’s boat needs about 0.3M and is moored outside the lagoon.
Sunday 18th 
I was awake at about 4 am so started to get ready to leave. Most of the packing had happened last night and some of the stuff has already gone home with Helen and Willow. It was a little chilly this morning with condensation inside the boat and mist around outside.
Karl woke up at our pre-arranged ‘alarm time’ of 5 am. As I was ready and had eaten my breakfast I set off.
The mist was very atmospheric and added a lot to the sunrise.
Just after this leg straight into the rising sun my outboard motor decided to start being difficult – Running only with the choke out and stopping randomly. Karl ended up towing me the rest of the way to his mooring using his boat. As we passed the Pool port The car ferry came back in – The scheduled times seem to be the same as previously but for some reason the ship doesnt seem to stay in harbor from the evening arrival until the morning departure.
After mooring Karl’s boat and having a celebratory drink we gradually started to creep across the moorings as the rising tide allowed. Eventually we got inside the lagoon at almost exactly the time we had estimated. 
This was all achieved using Karl’s electric outboard but actually wouldnt have been any different if my engines had been running as it was lack of tide that limited our progress.
For future reference I know I can get into the lagoon and make progress onto the mooring with 0.8 to 1M of water on the tidal board at the entrance. I was on my mooring and sorting out everything at 10:40. That took quite some time because leaving the tender on the mooring had provided a wonderful opportunity for rope knitting. The two bow strops and tender painter had got wrapped around my bow riser chain and also the stern one for the next mooring.
I was home for mid-day.
Monday 19th Helen has a couple of health appointments today so it was after lunch that I could get any boat stuff done. Unfortunately the MRI scan did bot work properly so she will have to go back for a repeat.
At around 1pm I set off for LSC to retrieve the outboard. While I was there I also tidied up the boat a bit and identified that I had left the second sleeping bag there so we will have both available when the kids are with us.
Removing the engine was a bit of a challenge with needing to be lifted off the bracket while standing at the back of the slightly under inflated tender. I had a piece of rope tied to the pushpit so the engine couldn’t fall into the water but there was no such certainty for me.
I got home at around 4 and then started to check the engine. I have managed to identify that there was some sort of white chalky substance in the carburettor float chamber. All the passages and jets have been cleaned using some spray cleaner so hopefully that is all clear and will solve the problem.
While I had the engine at home I also fixed some issues with the locking mechanism that should hold the engine in place while in reverse gear. I
also now understand the double throttle mechanism on the tiller – The end piece sets the maximum available throttle and the twist knob below the throttle is the friction adjuster. Maybe I can now get the engine to match the speed of Karl’s boat instead of being at least 2 knots slower.
After our evening meal I tried to check out the fuel pump which generally went alright but I initially lost a spring from the middle. This was somewhat caked with the same contamination as the float chamber. I am not sure whether that was the only spring as that particular layer came apart suddenly and I ended up having to search the grass to find that spring. If there was any other spring or parts in there as well I have not managed to find them so I may have to buy a replacement fuel pump.
I also used carb cleaner on the plugs and cleaned up the gap a little using emery cloth. The whole thing is now back together so I will try to get back to the boat tomorrow morning and test the engine. 
Tuesday 20th I arrived at the club just after 8 which was almost too early. No usable water in the channel up to either of the slipways but there was just about enough at the end of the pontoon so I wheeled the tender to the end and launched it – Mostly floating but the wheels were touching mud. Then carried the outboard and loaded it from the end of the pontoon.
The tide was still going out slightly from the first high but there was enough depth to row down the channel to my boat. The outboard was mounted on the bracket by 9:00 but the boat was not yet floating so the propeller was still out of the water.
I sorted out dog toys, sleeping bag and various other items left from the Wareham outing that need to go home. That took up enough time for the tide to come in a little. As soon as I tried to start the outboard I became aware that something is wrong in my fuel pump assembly because priming fuel causes a massive leak from the two square holes in one of the plastic segments. Fortunately I have a replacement on order.
After that setback I started to work on the inboard engine cooling problem. The three major plumbing connections were checked and confirmed that water gets in through the skin fitting through the pump to the anti-siphon valve and then on to the engine cooling inlet. Beyond that there is a very significant resistance to blowing.
It took a rather long time getting decent access to the four nuts that hold the “resonator” onto the engine block but eventually I managed to remove the one behind the starter (remove belt and move dynastart as far away from the engine as possible). Splitting the joint revealed three problems –
- The inlet gallery and opening in the gasket were filled with resin and something slightly resembling clay.
- The outlet joint that I improvised is also slightly blocked by silicone sealant.
- It may not be important but there is a third passage between the cylinder head and the resonator and that was also completely plugged with silicone.
I have re-assembled the joint after fixing these three issues. Unfortunately all the previous periods running the engine on the starter mean we don’t have enough battery power to try to start the engine. I am confident it will now work though so packed up and took all the essential items back ashore. I arrived home at 1:30, somewhat after Helen got back from her nail clinic booking.
First posted 1st April (with no date specific jokes). Updated 3rd April, 3rd May (pictures 4th), 10th, 18th, 19th, 20th.