Monday 9 August 2010

Mooring practice...

Just back from two weeks holiday in the Pelepenissos (Greece), so apologies for the lack of posts - sometimes laying around in the sun and drinking Greek beer has to take priority over sailing!

Brilliant sailing weather while on holiday by the way, a solid two weeks of 34'/36'C and force 3 or 4 - I lost count of the number of yachts I saw pushing along very nicely under just foresail, on turquoise waters.. if I win the lottery then maybe a sailing holiday out there would be a possibility - until then it's strictly dreaming territory

Just before I went away I'd planned to do the trip to the IoW on the 20th, I'd even taken the day off work to do it only to find out that on the day I couldn't get the damn outboard to start - with the wind in the direction it was, and with the distance planned, I simply couldn't go without the engine - it's insurance in the event of problems - so in the end I had to cancel the voyage, take the engine in to the local mechanic, and go to the pub..

Got it back today and the good (and bad) news is that they found nothing wrong - the mechanic tells me they put it in the water tank to test it and it started first time - they left it running for 30 minutes with no problems, so they gave it the once over to be sure, but nothing wrong. Bill has a couple of thoughts, but basically he's thinking a little bit of grit blocking an air inlet which may have been dislodged when I dropped the engine as I was moving it to the well - either way, the fuel's clean...

If anyone needs their o/board looking at by the way I wholeheartedly recommend these guys [click here] The check only cost me £10 which I think is amazing!

So with a return from holiday, and not been on the boat for two weeks, a visit was to Papillon was very much in order but with a whole load of other stuff to do I didn't have much time - no more than a couple of hours of tide - so I decided to try out the o/board, and then go for some mooring practice under sail...

Not much of a track is it! No more than a mile - I'm happy to say however, that the o/board behaved impeccably, and I managed to pick up a mooring perfectly while only under sail - no external assistance - well, third attempt, but the first two attempts were just playing....!

B.t.w - is it me or is this a very windy summer????? It was good top end 3 again today??!

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