Preparations for sea

After a winter working on the boat what could go wrong?  Over the winter I had been down to the boat often fitting new equipment and generally getting things ready.

I had fitted Hydrovane wind vane steering to reduce the power requirements on long passages, fitted a Hampshire heater charcoal burning stove to keep warm if needs be.  Covered the main bulk head with teak.  Towards the end of the last sailing season I had fitted a radar to improve safety in poor visibility and if needs be to act as a navigation aid should all else fail.  I purchased and fitted a life raft and EPIRM (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon), purchased new life jackets etc.  Fixed the mast head tri colour and anchor light together with the wind instrument.

It’s a funny thing with boats, however much you plan, make lists etc you never seem to have enough time to complete all the jobs before setting sail and there seem to always be things to do after setting off.  The only I was aware of that was not done was a new bulb in the deck light so I was feeling pretty good about things.  I had even stocked up with supplies for the trip to minimise the need to go ashore for large and heavy items liked tinned food.

The boat was launched at the beginning of April and I put the sails and the plan was to spend most of April enjoying some relaxing sailing around the Solent testing everything before setting off.

However, I had not counted on the mischievous Storm Katie which struck southern England in early April! I got a phone call early one morning from Scott Waddington the owner of Wicor Marine Yacht Haven to tell me my head sail had been damaged in the storm.

I went down to the boat, the wind was still blowing hard and it was obvious the damage was severe.  There was also damage to the toe rail (the bit of wood that runs along the boat.  In addition several mooring lines had been snapped or worn through.  It had obviously been a very rough night.

As soon as I could I took the sail off and straight to the sail makers for repair and or assessment.  Mark Flew’s assessment was that it was irreparable!  So, on the insurance company to see if they would help with the costs. At that stage little did I know the lead times for new sails.  But with the help of Mark a new sail was made, in the Philippines and shipped back to the UK within three weeks.

Ian Forster the carpenter in the year mended the teak toe rail so I thought things were coming along nicely.  That was until I tried to start the engine.  It didn’t sound right so after several attempts I thought I better take a look under the engine cover.  To my horror (not being an engineer) there was sea water coming out the air intake.  Somehow, and I still don’t really know how sea water was forced up the exhaust, round the swan neck and through the water trap into the cylinders.  The engineer tried to fix the problem on the water but was unsuccessful, fearing the worst that I might need a new engine I had the boat lifted out and chocked up so the engineer could work in more civilised surroundings.  It ended up that Luke and John Cutler had to remove the cylinder head to eventually solve the problem.  Once fixed the boat was relaunched. 

We were now in early May.  I had planned to leave on the 28^th April when the tides were right for going east and as it happened we had an unseasonal period of settle weather which would have been ideal.  By the time I was ready and the tides were right again it was the 9^th May.