Down for scheduled maintenance....

After the shenanigans of the RTIR last weekend, it was time for a down weekend to get some basic maintenance done. Belts needed tightening, the rig needed checking, the autopilot and chartplotter needed further configuring, and the Mikuni and Dickinson needed a run. The weather wasn't all that bad either.

Annoyingly, we continue to have problems with the Dickinson. After 45mins of good running, it starts to dump diesel in and the flame turns from a lovely yellow & blue, to yellow, to yellow & orange, to black smoke everywhere. Ugh. I've emailed Dickinson and the local supplier to see whether they can have someone come out and have a look at it.

Once all that fun was had, and since the weather was so nice, it was time to get the dinghy on the foredeck and give it an initial coat of paint. One thing I've found is that the dinghy's too big to live there long term, so we will be sailing with it on the davits.

The weekend also gave me a chance to test the ol' spinnaker pole & pulley kayak recovery system. It works a treat and isn't too much of a faff.

So that was about it for this weekend. I've ordered another 100W solar panel, the watermaker / SSB / mast steps are all being ordered today and we've started planning for our Channel Islands trip at the start of August. Excellent.