Progress

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....