Photos from the London trip

Queenborough evening

Gas bottle with missing valve (the regulator is separate)

The town hall is the nicest building in Queenborough

Simon helms as we pass the QEII bridge

View from Tower Bridge

Sam looks down through the glass floor. It will support six elephants so should be ok with him and Simon. Note whizzy new wheelchair with mountain bike tyres which is proving a major asset around marinas

Wapping fuel barge seen from the land. The big helpful phone numbers doesn't mean that anyone will answer them.

To St Kats with Simon

We last sailed up to London with Andy Roe and his son Sym in 2014. We hoped to repeat the experience with the same crew but sadly in the end Andy couldn't get away. Fortunately Simon Evans, who sailed with us in France in 2016, was able to squeeze in a short cruise between rehearsals for A Midsummer Night's Dream with Roughcast.

This was a cruise with the Haven Ports YC who are based on the lightship at Suffolk Yacht Harbour and we are immensely grateful to David & Gill Hervey Murray of Leading Wind for the time and effort they put into planning the event and getting us accessible berths.

Simon joined us late on the evening of May 24 for a civilised departure on May 25 at 0845. At that point we didn't really know how much fuel we would be using and the fuel gauge wasn't connected, so we had filled up at SYH with Guy the day before. Just as well, as it was a motor all the way to Queenborough, down the Wallet, across the Swin and down past Foulness, across the Thames at Sea Reach and into the Medway and then the Swale.

Queenborough found us an alongside berth but we decided it was just too much of a challenge to take Sam along the jetty and up the various steep ramps. However, it was just as well we were within easy reach of the land, as it transpired that our gas wasn't working and there was no shore power. Fish and chips all round at least kept us full and the odd glass of wine made sure we were relaxed. I've never been ashore in Queenborough before, it has a few nice buildings but otherwise is emphatically Isle of Sheppey.

The passage up to St Kats the next day into a W3-4 was a great test of the new engine and it passed with flying colours. We had to be at the St Kats lock at 1800 and were there with several minutes to spare. What a shame that we still had to circle in front of Tower Bridge for at least 30 minutes, were then called in by name on the VHF, sent back by the man on the lock with hand signals, and sent in again by Leading Wind. Our sympathies to the last three boats in our group who finally docked around 1930.

We had a great berth alongside the extremely blingy Queen's Barge, Gloriana.

It definitely concentrates the mind when arriving and leaving.

We visited Tower Bridge on the Bank Holiday Monday - the rest of the group went on Wednesday but we weren't staying that long. We had a coffee and walk along the south bank and later dinner wit he rest of the HPYC group. At £85 a night (yes yes, I know it's cheap for central London) I was glad we were only staying two nights.

Tuesday saw us filling up with fuel again at the Wapping barge, which required several phone calls to confirm and more paperwork than I have ever completed before when buying diesel. We headed back down-Thames to Queenborough, with Sam celebrating his birthday by staying in the cockpit until we had passed Thames barrier. This time we picked up a mooring and had pizzas cooked on the Cobb barbecue (Simon had achieved enough gas flow to boil a kettle but not for proper cooking).

And on Wednesday we had a truly fabulous sail back to SYH with about 10 minutes in total under engine. It was good to be able to show Simon what sailing is supposed to be about.

A new season and a new engine

Belatedly I am updating the blog with a few of the adventures we have packed into late May and early June, starting with a mechanical update.

In September I contacted Lindsay from SeaPower Marine, who over the years has done most of the engine work on Kalessin. Lindsay had suggested that he might be able to find a reconditioned engine suitable for replacing the now very old and tired Volvo Penta 2002, which was originally raw water cooled, converted to indirect cooling some time around the year 2000, and converted back to raw water cooling after the pump failed in 2015.

The debate continued at snail-like speed for most of the winter. Finally in February Lindsay convinced me that given the labour costs for putting in any engine, it would make much more sense to put in a new engine with warranty rather than a reconditioned engine where we didn't know the history. He told me that a new Volvo Penta D1-30 would cost marginally more than the Beta he would normally recommend, but that Volvo provide a conversion kit when any Penta engine is replaced by any other, and the kit would save at least 20 hours' labour. Also, all modern engines turn the other way from the 2002, but fortunately our Darglow Featherstream propeller could be sent off to Darglow who could pull out the middle, flip it around and reassemble for vastly less than the cost of a new prop.

We needed the engine in place so that we could join an HPYC cruise to St Katharine Dock at the end of May. What a good thing we had the deadline as otherwise I suspect Kalessin would still be on the hard at Suffolk Yacht Harbour. She was launched on Friday May 17 but the electrics were't quite finished and Lindsay had to rush off to Spain for work. We did sea trials with a substitute engineer, Travis, and Lindsay's admin lady, Jules, on Wednesday May 22. There was a funny noise on tickover, but fortunately it was fixed by raising the tickover speed a bit.


On Friday May 24 we took Kalessin upriver with Sam, Guy (older son), Kai his partner, Ivy aged five months (first sail) and Jenson the dog. We motored a bit and got the sails up and down, enjoying the clarity of the new cockpit hood. All was well, and we were almost ready to head to London the next day.

New engine in place with all hatches open

Points of note:

• The new engine fits very neatly in the engine compartment.
• The D1-30 with its 28hp allows us to motor steadily at 6 knots at 2000 rpm instead of 5.5 with the old engine, and also to push wind and/or tide much better than with the old 18.5hp.
• It uses more fuel: about 2 litres an hour instead of 1.5 or so with the old engine.
• We don't yet have hot water as the coolant header tank needs to be higher to prevent overheating in the calorifier.
• All the replaceable and checkable bits are accessible, but in some cases only just.
• We also have new battery switchgear as it seemed a good opportunity to tidy the wiring - the old cables to the dedicated fridge battery which we dumped in 2013 were still in place, as Ben had just taped them up.

Also updated this winter, for the record:

• New cockpit hood
• New LED lights in galley & forecabin
• New bit of carpet in the aft cabin
• A new Raymarine Evolution tillerpilot is bought but not yet fitted - it took a month to arrive instead of the promised three days