A few big jobs this week - namely wiring the solar & wind generators directly to the batteries and fitting some more insulating foam to the engine bay. More on that later.

After a frustrating Friday sweating and swearing at the boat, we made a last minute decision to head to Cowes on Saturday. Hot & sunny makes for great sunbathing conditions, but alas, no so great for sailing. So in 6kts of wind, we bobbed over to Cowes, with the occasional bit of motorsailing added in for kicks.

Testing the location of the new aft deck seating - once we get back from the CI's, we'll be building them out of aluminium and getting everything painted up.

The Solent lived up to it's Saturday afternoon reputation, with boats aplenty and enough larger vessels to keep things interesting.

Into Cowes, we were greeted by Christopher who was in town as well this week..... http://pendennis.com/yachts/christopher/

Everything was looking booked up but as luck would have it, a good friend of ours had just taken a berth opposite the pub so we broke our standard rule and rafted up against him. As much as the boat annoys me at times, having twin engines pays for itself time & time again.

Another Cowes sunset...

After a pub evening, Sunday morning came about and we made an early start back to Hayling. With full sail up and 8kts of wind on the beam, we happily moved along at 4kts, increasing to 6kts as the wind perked up to 13/14ks. Given the bottom of the boat needs a good scrub, having not been properly anti-fouled for two years, these are good figures for heading off to do long distances. The autopilot did a great job as well although I'm looking forward to fitting the Aries and seeing how that handles the weather.

Now, remember the kettle I mentioned earlier? Previously that would use 10% of our power when running. With the new wiring setup however, it used 2%. It turns out we have some interesting charge controllers installed that trickle feed the batteries, but the second a big load is placed on the system (say, a kettle), it diverts all the charge to that. I'm not 100% with that setup as I'd prefer our batteries to be topped up to 100%, but we'll see how this setup goes for the next two weeks and go from there.

So there you have it folks. One final test done and with the wind looking good for Wednesday, we're taking the afternoon tide to Yarmouth tomorrow, then at 02:00 Wednesday, striking out for the 85nm hop across the Channel to Guernsey.

40 weeks to go....

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This weekend was spent doing final prep before we cast off the lines for our trip to the CI's (scheduled for either end of this week or next).

First up, photos from last week's project of fitting sliding shelves into the aft wardrobes. Yes, we lose some space but the value of being able to access everything easily far outweighs that...

 

Next up, I wanted a table in the wheelhouse for eating breakfast at, playing scrabble, etc, so after rummaging through the aluminium spares shelf, came up with a base that'll do the job. The table top is a really nice white formica piece, leftover from last week's drawer install (each set of drawers came with one of these as a top). We've clamped it in place for the time being and if we don't depart until the 1st, I'll attach some fiddles to it this weekend as well.

Saturday then rolled around and we were due to head out for a 12hr test sail, but with major thunderstorms the night before and more predicted, we decided to play it safe and keep working on projects. Like climbing up a 40-odd foot aluminium mast and fitting the anchor light. There is a light at the top of the mast but it stopped working, and I wanted something easier to access. Equally, mast top anchor lights often get lost in the general clutter whereas whilst this new light can't be seen for the full 360 degrees, it illuminates the whole wind gen structure sufficiently that you'd be hard pressed to miss us...

After that, it was a general tidy up, re-stowing the kayaks on the fore deck....

....And the tender on the davits.

At this stage, we weren't due to arrive in Guernsey until the 1st / 2nd but the marina complained about the size of our of our packages meeting us there, so we're going to try and bring the trip forward to this weekend. Conditions look good - light northerly winds will make for a great downwind run - but that will mean we can't cruise with the other boat heading over with us, and one of our crew members may not have his passport in time. If we don't make it this week, we'll hit up Cowes this weekend then head over next week.

41 weeks to go.....

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Although not by boat.... We'll get to that shortly though.

This past weekend was spent doing more prep work; Friday we visited the chap supplying our SSB system, as well as giving the Dickinson one final chance to work properly. Having cleaned it and checked the flow rate, all went well for 45 mins. About a minute later though, black smoke, orange / yellow flame and time to shut down again. Needless to say, it's now on ebay and I'm still bewildered as to how diesel cookers work. It's somehow not getting enough air, even though nothing has changed since it worked fine when we first installed it. Ah well...

Out came the kayaks instead and we went for a paddle, then grabbed our deliveries from Ikea and spent the day fitting them in the boat. In short (and because I forgot to get photos), our aft cabin wardrobe setup wasn't ideal, so we bought three 6 drawer units that (with a bit of adjustment), now make for some excellent storage space. I also wired in the second solar panel. Our shore power has been struggling to get the domestic bank up to 100% (maintains 92% instead and only the engines seem to get us up to 100% with a 14.4V charge) but with the second solar panel, we seem to be sitting pretty again. No idea what's causing it but hey ho, it works now.

Come Saturday, the forecast decided not to play ball for our trip to Brighton so we ended up driving over instead. Had a great walk around, visited the marina anyway, gave the Pier a once over then drove back in the evening.

On the way back, we stopped in at the chandlery to pick up our freezer (Waeco CF40) - I wanted to hold off until right before we left, but Waeco have changed their model line from tall and thin, to low and fat, and we needed an older model to fit into our galley.

Yesterday was then spent doing a bit of cleaning and tidying, before the working week started again.

We have good tides for a day sail this coming Saturday, so with the starboard engine getting it's new injector this Friday, we're going to head out and give the boat a solid 12hr bash. I'd like to get the Aries fitted as well, as it'll clear it out of the boat, and also firm up our design for the aft deck seating.

Anyway, 43 weeks to go and only 2.5 'til we're off to the Channel Islands.....

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This is a brilliant video that really captures the essence of living aboard. No-one needs shorepower, a billion gadgets or for that matter, a plan....

http://vimeo.com/94842405

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With the British summer in full swing (ie. some sun, interspersed with rain showers) we were somewhat limited this weekend with what could actually be achieved. Time for some inside projects then.

Number one on the list was fitting a greaser for each of the prop shafts. For the non-boaty's out there, what they do is keep the prop shafts lubricated via means of a manual screw pump. Motor for an hour or two, give the greaser a twist or two. Nice & easy. This also gave me an excuse to poke around the engine bay and look for any loose bolts, things to tighten, etc.

Ah yes, the Dickinson. How could I forget? Having resigned ourselves to ditching it and going for gas instead, I thought we'd at least give it a clean and a chance at redemption (note: this does not solve my "kettle boiling for a quick cuppa" issue though). Anyways, we stripped it down and checked the drip rate (spot on), but then found a tonne of gunge / hard carbon in the diesel to burner feed pipe. This explains why it's been pulsing as well, as the fuel's struggled to get into the burner pot at a decent flow rate. 

Anyways, having covered myself, Lauren and the boat in diesel and carbon dust, we think the issue is solved and after giving the burner pot a good clean next weekend, I'll put everything back together and we'll see what happens when we fire it up.

Now back to kitting out for the circumnavigation, we'd resisted for quite some time but I finally capitulated and bought an Aries wind vane. The chap had listed it on Thurs not far from where the boat is, so we made an offer on Fri and collected it on Sat. Easy. It's a complete system that we need to make a couple of adjustments to, to suit our boat (namely extending the rudder tube), but other than now working out where to put the dinghy (more on that later), we'll get it fitted as part of our upcoming winter refit.

Next on the list was installing another solar panel. We already had 1 x 100W panel that did well holding the panels at charge, but felt adding another 100W panel would assist actually recharging the system. We're also not 100% comfortable our wind gens are pumping out as much power as they should, so the more solar, the better, right?

Anyways, after the fun of fitting a fixed panel, we went for a flexible panel this time and boy howdy, was it a lot easier to fit.

Last on the list was putting  a second coat on the dinghy. Not really much else to say about that.

So we're going to test sail the boat this weekend with the dinghy on the foredeck and see how it goes. It does slightly obscure our forward vision, but then so does the jib, and moving the kayaks to the aft deck makes fitting fenders a lot easier. I'm not 100% convinced this is better than davits, but watch this space.

Anyways, off to Brighton next weekend for 3 days. They're calling for N - SW winds of a <10kt variety, which should make for some good test conditions. The Channel Islands trip is also well into the planning stage, with us potentially taking a crew member. 3.5 weeks to go and we'll be there....

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