Glad we're not out there

I thought I was a bit of a wimp avoiding the forecast for today of SW4-5 occasionally 6 - I'm sure we'd have been fine. If that's what had happened.

The current forecast for Thames is :

Wind	Westerly or southwesterly 5 to 7, increasing gale 8 for a time.
Sea State	Moderate or rough.
Weather	Squally showers.

So I'm glad to be at home.

Shakedown shakeup

Before we head off to the Netherlands we thought it would be a good idea to try a shorter cruise – just to check that everything on the boat works, that we remember how to sail, etc. We expected to do this on Saturday or Sunday, but when we visited the boat on Thursday it transpired that Lindsey had already finished the work on the Morse controls. I searched desperately for another excuse not to go but the only possibility was that the wind was due to go to the SW, a really bad direction for heading from the Orwell to the Blackwater which is where we planned to go. On the other hand the strength was only 3-4, so really pretty manageable.

So on Friday afternoon we had a somewhat bumpy passage for the 29 or so miles to Bradwell. The best sailing was coming down the Orwell; from Landguard onwards we tried different varieties of motor-sailing until eventually the sea calmed down as we approached the Blackwater estuary and we made better progress.

We celebrated our arrival with a couple of drinks and a pizza, I had a short walk to stretch my legs, came back and started getting ready for bed. (It was about 9.30pm). I wondered why the pink towel was on the floor of the forecabin, and why it was soaked with salt water. Turns out that some of the waves breaking over the bow had run down into the cupboard in our bedroom. I vaguely remember Ben mopping out the cupboard... and then oblivion until midnight, when I suddenly awoke and realised that the fridge compressor had been on without a break since we left Suffolk Yacht Harbour. I had a cross, sleepy conversation with Sam, turned off the fridge, and then went out like a light again until 7.30am.

The fridge worked fine the next morning. So did the sailing back to Suffolk, although initially there was no wind at all and then what there was appeared to be coming from the north-east, which would be spectacularly unfair. Fortunately we actually got about a F3 from the south-east with a splendid sail from the Bench Head buoy all the way to Suffolk Yacht Harbour.

So, what did we find?

• We lost the top batten from the mainsail - Sam has already got a new length to replace it
• We need to find a way to fix the leak from the bow, and a couple of other minor leaks
  
• We do remember how to sail, but our tacks are a bit pathetic
• We didn't have a copy of chart C25, which we will need for the N Sea crossing - but fortunately we do now
• We need to find a better way to fasten down the front of the genoa
• We forgot to reset the calibration on the depth gauge after installing the replacement instrument, so we've been sailing in about 1m less water than I thought (I realised this as we went aground for a second at the entrance to SYH )
• The wind indicator is probably under-reading and is slightly skewed to starboard
• The log is under-reading by 20-30%
  

What's good, or better:

• The new engine controls work fine and I can once more control the throttle with my toe
  
• The new upholstery is good to sleep on, though a bit firm
• The new mainsail stack-pack ( a Jeckells Mainmate) makes it very quick and easy to lower the main, and more to the point Sam can get to the gin and tonic about 20 minutes earlier than before (time he used to spend putting on the sail covers)
• It's much easier to see the Gunfleet sand than it used to be, because they are building a very large offshore windfarm on it.

Unfortunately the forecast now looks as though there will be SW5 or 6 on Monday and Tuesday, so Wednesday looks like the earliest departure. We'll see how it goes.

Nearly going

I finished my contract with Aviva UK on Friday 26 June - and I don't start the next one with Aviva Europe until 10 August. So that gives us six weeks to go sailing. Ben has finished his GCSEs and has availability. Guy doesn't do sailing.

So have we gone yet? Err... no.

We've taken Kalessin out a couple of times so far this season and both times the throttle felt very sticky and unresponsive. I do most of the throttling :-) and wondered if I was making unfair comparisons with the Broads launches, which have about three times the power. Anyway, Sam got Lindsey, our engineer, to check over the connections, and the bad news is that we really need a new Morse control. The current one was fitted when the boat was new, i.e. 21 years ago, is very worn, and may fail any time in the next year or two. I can think of lots of situations when the throttle connection might fail, and very few of them are the sort of situation where you could say "oh well, never mind". So we are waiting for Lindsey to complete the fitting, which won't be until the end of this week.

While Sam was down at the boat last week I asked if he could check that the radar was OK. We didn't use it at all last season, and most of the time it was disconnected because the scanner was attached to the mast in Calais, while we were on the canals. "Oh", he said, "I've checked it already, it was fine." I suggested that it might be a good idea to run it for an hour or two just to be sure. Then on Saturday, I took a call from Phil, who does our electrical and electronic stuff. "Sam says he's concerned that the radar isn't working," he said. Ah... possibly he forgot to tell me? Anyway we were very concerned for a couple of days because we thought the processor might have failed (£1,000 for a new standalone radar, or anything up to £4,000 for a new radar/plotter combination, plus we might have to chuck away £1,000-worth of existing electronic charts). Thank goodness, it seems it was a faulty connection. The radar lives to fight another day, which is just as well considering the current hot weather is also generating a lot of fog in the North Sea.

Actually we're quite glad not to be going yet, because the current hot weather is also distinguished by fairly steady easterly winds, force 3-4. Absolutely perfect for sailing from the Netherlands to East Anglia, but rather a nuisance for going in the opposite direction. It also gives me a chance to clean the house, weed the garden, plough through vast piles of personal admin, catch up with my blogs, go for walks and even (tomorrow) go to work for a day.


It also gives me more time to plan the route - wind and weather permitting, it looks like Harwich to Ijmuiden, which is a long but straightforward passage with the delightful characteristic of being to the north of all the traffic separation schemes and precautionary areas (for non yachties, this means you can go in a straight line once you're clear of the Shipwash bank).

I'm hoping that we'll have time for a bit of a shakedown cruise to the Blackwater, to help us remember what it's like being at sea - yes, the Wallet isn't quite open ocean, but it's a lot more like real sea than the Orwell.

In the meantime, it's good to know that I'm not working in what looks like being the hottest week of the year so far - apologies to all of you wearing suits in very hot offices....

Long gap...

I'm a bit shocked to see that it's five months since I last posted to the blog. Admittedly, we haven't yet been sailing this year (although Kalessin has been in the water since mid-May), but we have had a few other waterborne activities.

In April I passed my assessment as an Auxiliary Navigational Ranger on the Broads and got my keys....Very long pause there while I worked out how to export images from iPhoto. I'm still getting used to using a Mac. Anyway I'm now out on the rivers a couple of times a month, which is great.

On my birthday I acquired a new way to go boating (seen here floating on a yoga mat....):


...an inflatable kayak. Ben & I have been out today for our first proper expotition, around Geldeston on the Waveney. Ben was so tired afterwards he came home & slept for three hours. Or perhaps it's the GCSEs?

We're trying to decide where to take Kalessin in the summer - I finish work on 26 June for around 6 weeks. Netherlands is still favourite I think but I'm waiting to see if Ben can make his mind up. Exactly three years ago we were all set for the big departure....

New year, new upholstery

After weeks of agonising over colours, patterns, textures, fabrics, prices and more we have finally commissioned Jeckells* to replace all the upholstery on the boat. I feel kind of guilty because it's such a girly thing, but as the old seat covers were splitting in several places we really didn't have much choice.

In addition they will remake the cushions in the cabins so that the base boards and cushions are separate - no idea why Westerly made them in one piece originally, but the result is that the cushions are heavy, unwieldy and in the case of the aft cabin are actually too big to get out through the door. If we do go back to the tropics (or just anywhere warmer than the UK) we can also replace the boards with bed slats from Ikea to allow better air circulation.

Sam and I went down to the boat yesterday to check everything was OK. We thought we'd go for a 3-mile walk around Trimley and then retreat to the boat to warm up and have lunch. Unfortunately, Jeckells are so keen that all the cushions had already gone! We had to sit in the cockpit and enjoy our lunch there. It is strange to sit in the cockpit, high above the ground, looking out over a grey-green field filled with mist and gorse, and think of all the other views we have had from the same cockpit over the past three years - the emptiness of the Bay of Biscay, the huge swell off Portugal, colourful fishing boats in the Ile de Groix, the heat (38deg) and harbour wall in Bonaire, the depth of the Bollene lock...

* Jeckells and Sons, the upholstery people in Wroxham, established in 1832, are not under any circumstances to be confused with Jeckells the Sailmakers in Wroxham, established in 1832.

Presentation time

Last weekend we gave a talk to the Haven Ports Yacht Club - our home club at SYH. It was a disgusting evening, pouring with rain, very windy, generally horrible. I'd prepared a speech which started "We'd like to thank both of you for coming tonight..." Astonishingly about 50 people attended and we got really great feedback. If you were there, thank you!

Thank you also to Judy for the preparation and for inviting us in the first place.

If you would like to see the slides they are at Slideshare.

Home to the Orwell

The Grand Tour is officially over. Kalessin of Orwell sailed between the pierheads of Suffolk Yacht Harbour just after 5pm on Sunday 14 September, after around 4000 miles, and two years and three months since she left.

On 11 September Sam headed back to Calais the old-fashioned way via ferry and train. Ben and I were all set to head off by Eurostar on Friday the 12th. What a pity that the Tunnel was closed by a fire on the afternoon of the 11th...

Anyway thanks to SeaFrance Ben and I did make it to Calais on the 12th (eventually) and we headed for Ramsgate on Saturday - quite calm, quite sunny, an uneventful crossing, except for the moment when a NorfolkLines ferry came straight at us... anyone who has crossed the Channel will know the feeling.

Sunday's passage from Ramsgate was a bit more eventful - north-easterly 4-5 (fortunately perhaps our wind indicator display is broken), horrid Thames estuary chop, and all of us tired and stressed about dealing with bumps for the first time for... well, for Ben and me the last time was a couple of bumpy hours in Majorca last August. We still got sunshine and we remembered the great thing about tides - we were swept home at an average of well over 6 knots.

And last weekend we moved Kalessin on to a mooring on the Orwell, with thanks to Dave who has kindly lent us his mooring until the end of October.

What next? Well, we've started to clear several tons of books and other stuff off the boat, goodness knows where we will put it. There's a bit of catching up to do on maintenance. Hopefully we'll have a few weeks of east coast pottering before laying up ashore. Next year we might go somewhere modest, like the Dutch Delta. And after that Sam and Ben are both really keen on the Baltic...

Moorings seen from the Nacton shore - Kalessin is currently in there somewhere