And the work goes on. Here we are, closing in on the fourth Christmas I've owned this boat and progress continues to happen. The new naming stickers went on last weekend and after a bit of rain, seem to have settled in well. The boot stripe stickering is having trouble adhering tho, so we might paint that on next time the boat's hauled out.

As some of you will remember, last winter was also truly a misery. Cold temps, constant easterly winds and snow. Having fitted the Mikuni diesel heater (which does a great job heating the wheelhouse and warming the rest of the boat), I finally got around to installing the wood / charcoal burning stove. What a revelation. 8 degrees outside with a chilly wind and we're working in t-shirts inside. Brilliant. I still need to build a box around it and perhaps install a 12V fan behind (circulating the warm air will up the temperature even further), but thus far it's definitely proven to be one of the best investments. And all for £120.

Of course, there are other ways of installing these stoves and I spied this one whilst on a "come over for a drink" evening. I won't name names, but the creative effort put into this install is just amazing.

The cooler weather has produced some great sunrises (or was that a sunset? I can't remember) and this has easily been one of the warmer winters I can remember in a long time.

And here's progress. The cabin's almost finished (I'll fit the TV this weekend and stuff all the excess materials into the cabin) and other than a few jobs, we're all set for test sailling the week of NYE. I think the plan will be to head to Osborne Bay (about 15nm) for an anchored lunch, before making a decision on whether to proceed up Southampton Water and anchor again in the evening, or return to a local anchorage. It all depends on the weather really, and whether it stays calm or blows up.

The next big trip then will be a circuit of the IOW (a good 12 hr / 70m sail) before next summer's week long trip to the Channel Islands. Big tides, tight anchorages and a Channel crossing all thrown into the mix. If it's going to happen, it'll happen out there....

Anyway, that's it for this week. The next update should be from on the water... Have a great Christmas.

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Now there's a post title to get you wondering what's going on. Sadly, no, the boat hasn't sunk. Yet. A good chum (Grant) and I have however spent the past two weeks tearing aspects of the boat apart that I've never really been happy with, and rebuilding them into something a bit more useful.

Let's start with the salon table. It was one of those great ideas in principle - use a heavy bit of wood on a skinny adjustable pedestal so everyone could sit around for some fine dining, then lower it for folks to sleep on. A sizable sum was spent on the pedestal, everyone oooh'd and aaah'd, then we realised the table pedestal just wasn't man enough and frankly, how many people were actually going to sleep over on the boat (see the next paragraph for more on this)???

Next, for those people who did linger at the end of an evening and we couldn't punt back to their boats, a forward cabin seemed a logical idea. That and I'm sure I'm going to find myself banished there at some point. Did I mention as well the desk was just not really working, the TV had no place to be bolted to, and those hundreds of DVDs on the boat could be swapped for a single memory stick containing THOUSANDS of movies?

Now this presented a problem. Building a forward cabin would mean a cupboard had to be lost, but building a cupboard under the table meant we had a new place to store things. Like rum (50+ bottles to be exact). Problem solved.

Bring on the demolition team. To his credit, Grant does amazing woodwork and hasn't destroyed the boat *that* much, but it did take a tonne of garbage bags and a good couple of hours to make the boat presentable for Lauren's arrival. Anyway, here's some pictures of the work in progress. I'll get some updated pics this weekend.

What else did we get up to.... hmmm. The boat now has a slightly darker shade of blue on half of it, the salon benches are coming along quite nicely and one of them now has a paperwork locker beneath it. I've also ordered the aluminium angle for building the new internal winch towers (which, btw, will allow for a full turn on the winches) and as of a brain wave late last night, am refining a way of storing various food stuffs in the bilge areas. Needless to say it's going to take up more money and time, but will of course allow us to store even more tins of beans, vegetables and fruit. Yay.

Updates to follow.

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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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