Others may have been watching the Royal wedding, FA cup, etc.; we are watching Beachy Head.  We have been watching it for quite a while, a consequence of arriving at exactly the wrong time.  We are making 5 knots through the water, not bad with 11 knots of wind, but less than two over the ground.  That’s the trouble with the worst of a spring tide coming the other way around the headland…

Delighted to be joined by Jerry for this leg from Ramsgate to Brighton.  A long-serving previous member of Littlehampton lifeboat crew, he arrived just in time to rescue a man that had fallen in the water while berthing his yacht.  The pontoons are too high out of the water for anyone to get out without help!  In spite of his obvious heroism, he hasn’t yet convinced us to get the compass adjusted.

We left a tippy berth, a bit too close to the harbour entrance, mid-afternoon yesterday.  Spent most of the night ghosting past Dungeness under the stars – 11 knots of wind is as good as it has been, mostly it has been much less and the passage plan based on a 5 knot average speed soon started to look ambitious.

A beautiful night, but cold and damp.  Many layers, still cold.  Almost bailed in a moment of tiredness after breakfast, tempted by Eastbourne.  But held our ground.  We won’t be there by mid-afternoon today– but have high hopes for tea time.  Could be worse.  The sun is out and the cruising chute is up.  Another 30 min of sleep would make it perfect.

 

It was emotional leaving Gillingham.  The marina is a very special environment – insulated from real life by the security barrier is a tranquil oasis.  It has its oddities but you can live with them once you understand them.  The staff are fabulous and the whole site feels cared for; it has become home from home.

Day 1: 32 miles sailed.  We are moored at Harty Ferry, tucked behind the Isle of Sheppey (which is about as close as you would want to get to it), en route to Ramsgate.  Ramsgate is do-able in a long day but with a late start favourable due to the tide, and strong winds forecast, we figured that a gentle start would be good.

Not really that gentle when it came to it.  A steady 28-33kt northerly all day – Force 7.  There are 2 reefing lines available to pull the end of a smaller sail down to the boom.  Every year we mess up rigging them in one way or another and this was no exception: instead of rigging reef 1 and 2, we accidentally rigged reef 2 and 3.  Fortuitous as it turned out: we have had 2 reefs in all day and that was quite enough sail.  Had the conditions become any stronger would have been looking at reef 3, which would have been a first for us.  As it was we had an exciting but rather wet beat to windward to get clear of the Medway and then were blown up the Swale at 6kn under a double reefed jib and no main.

So quite a test for our first day out!  So far, so good.  The rigging looks OK, Alex’s new engine temperature gauge works, the diesel cabin heater started (always a worry) so we can dry out and warm up.  Just as we arrived the sun came out and we have been treated to a fine sunset and a dozen seals sitting on the mud.  If we thought sailing round the UK would be tough, the chap on the mooring next to us seems to be doing a round Britain row.  Unlike us, he has got his live position working on his website!

Alex is looking at the plan for the rest of the way to Ramsgate tomorrow and is trying to convince me there is no benefit in starting early…

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We are nearly ready!  After many trips back and forward with tools, gear, and projects in various stages of completion, yesterday we made the last car trip.  The next journey will be one way, by train.  The interior, covered for months in protective cladding, has been cleaned, waxed and Scotch-Guarded.  Helen is hoping the smell will have gone in a couple of days (Alex seems to like it).

The many curved cubby holes behind and underneath every flat surface have been stacked meticulously with spares, gear, tools (will we really need an angle grinder?) and pasta, rice and Alpen in enormous quantities.  At home the cupboards are bare and the piles of “work in progress” have shrunk to nothing.

And the nerves have started.  The enormity of what we are planning has finally sunk home.  There are a lot of miles and some wild stretches of water in front of us.  Every time we push the boundaries of what we do, I wake up feeling nauseous and wish I had remembered from past experience to opt for a quiet life.  I will miss the garden.  We did a final tidy the other day and coated the borders with bark mulch to keep water in and weeds down, so it is looking better than it has for ages!  It is green and brown, with spots of red, white and purple flower.  The coastal landscape has a very blue-grey palette.

Alex doesn’t bother with these nerves but will miss the shower.

Today’s blog was originally to be called “toilet humour”, reflecting recent frustrating experience.  However, a sail to Stangate Creek in the early summer sunshine has been so delightful that it seems inappropriate.  Stangate Creek is our favourite muddy backwater on the river Medway, a sheltered and peaceful spot with nothing but water, sky and a strip of mud and low vegetation between the two.  It’s a couple of hours from Gillingham under sail and an obvious choice for a shakedown trip.  We made a joint trip with our marina neighbours Robin and Jo: they were up for some company for their first night at anchor on their new boat and we certainly were, having had most of the boat in pieces over the winter and not being sure what was going to go wrong next.

Glorious conditions: almost warm, just about enough wind, clear sky.  Engine temperature off the scale just after getting out of the marina.  Opps.  Shut down asap, luckily we have a more reliable means of propulsion.  Admittedly coolant a bit low but seemed rather quick to overheat.  Voltmeter out again: running the engine from cool shows the resistance of the sender dropping from ~800Ω to ~150 as it warms up.  Seems plausible so it looks like the engine and the temperature sender are ok and we need a new gauge.

Engine / gearbox oil under observation.  Possible traces of oil in the engine bay.  Will clean out and review.

Intermediate shrouds a little slack under sail.  Easy fix.  Light wind, but so far so good with the rigging.

For the first time we deployed an anchor buoy.  Attached to the anchor crown with a short line, it is supposed to mark the position of the anchor and, if it fouls an underwater obstruction you can drag it out backwards using the spare line.  Unlikely in good east coast mud but a good precaution in rockier environments that we will get further west and north.  The buoy disappeared without trace although we did spot it briefly at low water.  Towed under by the tide, perhaps – need something more buoyant!

The electric outboard needs >10A fuse.  Otherwise, it was a triumph, including the home made mounting system.  Powers the kayak well and got us to dinner on Lady Jo in fine style and without getting soaked.  Should have packed the black tie dinner wear after all?

Finally, and significantly, the toilet works!  Marine toilets are regarded as sensitive beasts and ours had taken to not flushing when we are at sea.  A new pump barrel and additional one-way valve on the salt water inlet (flush) should have been easy to install, and weren’t.  Late on Friday evening, wrestling with waste pipes, our sense of humour was slipping away.  However, waking this morning, at anchor, with blue sky visible through the forehatch, reflections of rippling water playing on the ceiling, birds calling all around and the possibility of a working toilet, those hassles seemed far away.

Weyhay!  We have the mast back in again.  Delighted with the new Petersen rigging – sleek and shiny, a great improvement on the odd assortment of fittings we had before.  Spent an enjoyable, if cold, morning tweaking until the mast rake, tension and bend seemed about right.  The wire normally used for yacht rigging needs to be stretched to 10-15% of its breaking load to provide stability against sudden loading and to prevent the mast sagging to leeward in gusts.  We found out with the Moody just how much better behaved this makes a boat in a blow.  Ventata’s rig is more complicated – an extra set of shrouds and the spreaders are swept backwards which means the fore-aft and side-side trim are not independent.  But we are getting more experienced with it and are pretty happy with the set up.  Next step is to try it out under sail to make sure it stays straight and under tension under load.

It has been hard work, but the list of jobs is finally getting shorter rather than longer and there is a growing number of things that work.  We now get better internet reception on board than at home!  Apparently Vodaphone gives the best coastal coverage, so we need a new data provider (and a bigger monthly allowance).  We are starting to ship stuff to the boat that we want to have with us, and bring back stuff we don’t.  The interior is not exactly ship shape but at least the aft cabin is now full of sails rather than tools.  Still a bit to do but we are working towards a shakedown trip next weekend.

Finally, in a promising discovery that provides added incentive to make it to Scotland – tinned pears go surprisingly well with a glass of Scotch…

Great excitement last week, with the first proof of the solar panel charging. It is hard to explain why the sight of +2A on the battery monitor could be so pleasing. Possibly the expectation, from years of experience, that plugging in a new input and removing the protective cardboard would be followed by 2 days of chasing faults around the boat with a voltmeter. But no, on a sunny day it appears we can power the fridge! In daytime at least. Normally milk glued to the bottom of the bottle is associated with accidental yohurt-making.  But in this case it was frozen. Must sort the thermostat out…

Alex is pleased with the deck. The hot weather last week was the perfect opportunity to clean and seal the teak.  Take it from me it’s a lof of cleaning: a basic thorough clean followed by teak cleaner, teak restorer and 2 coats of sealer.  My hands have only just recovered!  Fortunately, you can only do once in a while as it is aggressive on the deck as well as your hands. So I can take it easy for the rest of the year.

The new standing rigging has arrived! It is sitting, coiled and shiny, in the back of the car and tomorrow we will fit it to the mast. As ever, it has been weeks since we took it all apart so the hope is that you can find all the right bits and put them together in the right order. “Interesting” that we have to fit the fitting that secures the base of the forestay ourselves. The forestay is supplied as wire cut slightly over length so it can be fed back down the tube that the genoa is furled around.  We have to cut it to length and make up the fitting that will hold the whole mast up.  Unlike all the other wires, there is no redundancy for this one – if it fails under load, we loose the mast. No pressure then. Still debating whether to shorten it a little. The rig has a lot of rake and bend – much more than recommended as an upper limit by my rigging handbook. Taking 50mm off the length moves the top of the mast forward by around 160mm. But she sails well so presumably it is supposed to look like that?

It can be difficult to know when to trust your  judgement. The locker under the forecabin had an air vent set in.  Badly done, didn’t look original. To me it looks like the bulkhead extends above the waterline and would protect you from a hole in the bows. Why would you cut a hole in that?  Maybe something to do with ventilation for the battery for the horrible bowthruster? We filled it in, anyway, it felt like the right thing to do…

Your call is important to us.  Queue annoying music interrupted periodically by unhelpful messages.

Hmm.  Not important enough to man the call centre sufficiently to prevent long queues.  We spent the entire morning on the ‘phone earlier in the week, dealing with banks, insurance, milk deliveries, eta of the new rigging, etc. etc..

Inexplicably, the car insurance people could not comprehend our wish to insure both cars while declaring them off the road for tax purposes.  The conversation looped:

“You need to contact the DVLA, I’ll cancel your policy”

“I understand I need to deal with the DVLA about tax. (That is easy.)  I want to maintain the insurance”

“OK”

“You can confirm that the cars will still be insured when they are not taxed?”

“No, I will cancel your policy”

“I want to keep the policy.  The cars might be stolen or the garage might burn down even though we are not driving them and they are therefore not taxed.”

“You need to contact the DVLA, I’ll cancel your policy”

And so it continued for 20 minutes.  As the charging structure of our phone / broadband / tv contract is a mystery that runs close second to pricing of rail tickets, I have no idea whether to be annoyed about the cost of the call, or just the time it takes to get nowhere.  Fortunately, if you phone the same company masquerading as a new customer you get to speak with someone with that is able to help you with (it turns out) a straightforward enquiry.

The only organisation to come out with any degree of credit this week was first direct.  Ever reliable, the ‘phone is answered on first ring, by a human, with an accent you can understand, who understands your problem and can almost always sort it out.  Wouldn’t bank with anyone else.  Maybe they do car insurance?

Antifouling on, we are back in the water, in the drizzle, on a grey April day.  Nice to be able to hose the decks off – the boat yard is sludgy and gritty underfoot and doesn’t drain well, so it is hard to avoid bringing dirt on board and harder to get rid of it when you have.  We hoped that without a mast to offer convenient perching, we might be less vulnerable to nuisance birds.  Wrong again!  Who needs masts when you have overhanging trees?  The pigeons sit there biting off new shoots and dropping them (and other deposits) everywhere.  The joys of wildlife…

 

 

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Following on from last meetings at work, and the last day at work, could this week have seen our last night at Medway M2 services?  As you can’t stay on board with the boat in the yard, we have become quite attached to the place over the last couple of months.  It is the cheapest local accommodation and always available: £46/night and 30 minutes notice buys an acceptable room, unmemorable artwork, invariably cheerful Travelodge staff and a decent discount at Burger King.   Saturday nights of late have come down to a choice of Whopper meal vs Chicken Royale (~60/40 to the Whopper even though Alex doesn’t like the tomato) and whether, after working on the boat all day, we had enough energy to have a shower first.  If you are lucky you get a rear facing room and wake up to woodland views and bird song.  If not, you get the lorry park and noise of running engines.  We have been averagely lucky.

We may not have seen the last of the M2 services as there are new oil deposits under the engine and all round the gaiter that makes the seal between the drive leg and the hull.  Gearbox oil?  Engine oil?  Hard to tell.  They are both new and clean, and it could be either based on where the stuff has ended up.  An oil leak on the drive leg was the main reason we had the thing overhauled in the first place, so it’s going to be a problem if that problem isn’t sorted.  However, a pressure test suggested the new seals are OK, and the engine didn’t loose any oil last year, so we may just be seeing the aftereffect of old stuff that had got into the bell housing at the end of the engine.  Fingers crossed.  If we’re wrong, we won’t be in the water for all that long and there will be another cranage bill on its way…

In good news, Ventata isn’t leaking so we must have done a decent job reinstalling that drive leg – it sits in a very big hole below the waterline!  So, back in the water, we are enjoying cleaning the deck (much easier without all that rigging about) and have fitted a solar panel.  Together with an up-rated alternator, this should improve our power budget when away from marinas (and the humiliation of needing to plug a sailing yacht into the mains because you are too soft to live without a fridge and a chartplotter).  We had a quiet moment of satisfaction that engine started first time and the up-rated alternator does indeed charge the batteries.  If this sounds trivial, check out the notes below for making sure we put back the things we took apart and consider the disconcerting nature of having to remake the wiring (to take the higher current and because the old stuff has the wrong connectors) and, worse, of having bolts left over afterwards.

The downside of not sleeping in a Travelodge is that you need to remember towels.  We forgot and have been using tea towels to dry off with after showers for the last 2 days.  The life of luxury yachting eh?

To all our colleagues, at TRL and wider afield, for your many good wishes and gifts.  It feels very strange not to be coming back to the office tomorrow.  Richard A and Dave G we would particularly like to thank for your kind words, so much appreciated.  Looking forward to the champagne!  Also to learning to fish – thanks Matt – an inspired present.

The mast is out and Ventata seems bare without her rig!  The marina staff thankfully made a good job of taping over the hole in the deck; even with all that rain it hasn’t leaked a drop.  We weren’t really expecting them to leave the boom inside the boat.  Good for security but rather an obstacle in the saloon – making tea has become rather an acrobatic feat so I don’t think it will be staying there.

Seeing the mast on the floor gave me a renewed sense of the scale of this boat.  The size and weight can be frightening.  The longest room in our house is 19’; at over 16 metres the mast is about three times the length.  It’s heavy, and complicated: nav lights, anchor light, steaming light, deck light, wind instruments, vhf antenna, radar dome.  An unidentified aerial – the cable we labelled Coax1 inside the boat last week goes to a flimsy piece of wire at the top of the mast that does… who knows what?!  We have 2 sets of spreaders, 4 pairs of shrouds, a forestay and split backstay holding the mast up, each one something of an effort to handle.  Halyards for the mainsail, genoa, spinnaker (x2) and spinnaker pole (x2), and that’s not counting the ropes associated with the boom.

Lots of stuff; everything with its own function and, on a 1994 boat, potential for failure.  Visual inspection isn’t necessarily a reliable indicator of condition (does that sound familiar?), and there’s never a good time for it to go wrong.

Scrape the old grease, general muck and dead barnacles off that wonder of engineering and beauty that is our folding propeller (and hope it’s obvious which order the bits go back together when we have the engine etc. back in place and are able to refit them…)