So another weekend out and about. Winter's on the way so having fitted a Mikuni diesel heater (3.9kw) two weeks ago, a nice cold morning presented the perfect opportunity to crank it up and burn out all the crap. This is the salon with a nice haze wafting through....

After two days of quite breezy conditions, Saturday dawned bright, sunny.... and windless. 0.0kts. We reasoned a motor out for mooring and berthing practice wouldn't be a bad way to spend a sunny day, so lines were cast off and we made the trip out to the mooring field.

Lauren's not had a lot of experience berthing or mooring before, so it was on to practice 101 with everyone's favourite boat yard crazy man (aka Grant). For those of you who know Grant, you'll be surprised to hear all went well and not one explosion occurred. Crazy, I know. Anyway, we were on our way back to the marina here for berthing practice.

So enough of this sailing nonsense, what did I really spend the last four days doing? Thurs and Fri (plus last weekend) was spent building a new hatch. It doesn't leak a drip and being made out of alu, is rather tough.

Here's the hatch from the outside. It still needs some paint around the edge and a light sand, but is fundamentally all done.

After that little project, it was time to take care of one of my two remaining bug bears. The outside helm position can't be fixed for the time being, but the lack of wheelhouse seating can. Here we see the alu framing for the starboard side seat - the winches will also soon be brought inside and sit on the end of this on a plinth.

And the port side. This is more of a wraparound seat with a small table to be fitted (I mean really, who wants to sit below to eat breakfast? Having a view is waaaay nicer). In the background you can also see the installed Mikuni heater and general storage heater.

Anyway, that concludes this week's update. I'm hoping to get down this Friday to get the wood trimmed and fitted onto the wheelhouse seating - watch this space.

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Quite the storm blew through this past week, with winds topping 45-50kts at the yard and 99mph off the Needles. The boat came through relatively unscathed but the same couldn't be said for the tender..... on the plus side, I only insured it all a week ago, so that'll be a new tender and outboard, thank you very much....

Anyway, that storm produced some interesting weather but blew through pretty quickly.

Having taken half the week off to get some sailing in, it was looking like we weren't going to get a window... until Saturday morning dawned. We had a 3 hr tide window, the promise of a tad breezy afternoon and a fishing fleet dredging in Chichester Harbour, but out we went and unfurled the sails (the engines stayed ticking over and in neutral just from a safety perspective). The main slid out of it's track and will need replacing, but with the genoa and mizzen out, the performance was:

45deg off the wind - blowing 12kts
2.5 kt tide against us
genoa only - 1kt progress

On the return leg, with the wind off our port aft quarter and a 2kt tide behind us, 2/3 genoa and mizzen, 4.5 kts.

So, what does this equate to? In a good breeze, we should see 5.5-6.5kts which is about spot on for a solid bluewater cruiser. Excellent.

The rest of the 1/2 week off was also successful - Mikuni diesel heater fitted, aft shower sump repaired (bl**dy float switches) and one wind gen wired up and spinning away.

This now means the first motoring test has been completed, the first motorsailing test has been completed, and now it's a case of waiting for a weekend when we can leave the harbour and get the sailing testing done. Winter is coming but with the diesel heater and wheelhouse, things should stay toasty warm. Progress....

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