D-day! Or is it?

Friday evening - the lull

Saturday evening - storm brewing

Unfortunately not, no. Gale force winds have kept us pinned down on pontoon in Itchenor Reach. Apologies to anyone who might have been looking for an update yesterday, my 'draft' post created last night, as the winds were increasing, was inadvertently deleted when our 3G signal was lost! To summarise, the weather has delayed our embarkation date by at least one day and maybe more.

Dismantling the water system

The Engineer in tight spot

The Engine - a vital component

The Engineer

Since we are led to believe that about 50 per cent of the tour will require motorised propulsion, we thought that at least one of us should know how to maintain and repair that most wonderful of inventions, the diesel engine. Guess who drew the short straw?

The Manuals

Good job too, as I don't know a big end from a gasket ...

CA House, Limehouse Basin, London

Actually he really loves engines, could spend hours with them -  so it wasn't too much trouble to persuade him to go on a Diesel Engine course, run by the RYA at Cruising Association House. 

De-winterising Follyfin

A couple of weeks ago we ventured south again to prepare the boat for sailing after the winter. She has been out of the water since October. Both above and below deck, the general mayhem was apparent.

Above deck from stern

View from cockpit

Mainsail in saloon

Chaos in saloon

Fore cabin with dinghy

Our work involved re-rigging all the lines and sails that had been removed or packed up in plastic bags back in November, as well as cleaning off bird droppings and seeds etc., flushing through drainage holes, polishing the 'silver' ware, and generally returning the boat to active duty. 

Rigging the lines

The rigger

The fore sail 'jib',  ready to hoist

Main sail in position

Putting on the 'bonnet'

Those mast steps very useful

We were prepared for cold and/or wet weather but as it turned out, we hit upon 3 of the warmest days of the year so far - distinctly reminiscent of summer indeed! This made our work all the more pleasant especially as it also included manual calibration of the 50 metres of anchor chain. A preliminary attempt was made to splice an extra 30 metres of multiplait rope to the anchor chain but as we were working from diagrams in a book, this took much longer than anticipated and did not get finished - 'work in progress' as we say.

Anchor & chain ready for calibration

White paint marks every 10 m