Good to go

With rather a lot of despondency and in the immortal style of John Major, not a little trepidation, I called a recommended engine guy at Thornham Marine to have a look at our beleagured Bukh engine. I had all sorts of horrible visions of gunk completely clogging up the high pressure pump and such like with irreparably damaged injectors. He said he would make a quick visit, probably on Tuesday (tomorrow as I write). This afternoon he called me to say that it was running fine and was suffering from lack of compression owing to no oil being on the cylinders against which the piston rings can form a seal. Apparently, the trick is to spray a good few squirts of oil into each cylinder at layup time while you have the air filter off.

I am definitely going to do a diesel engine maintenance course next winter! Anyway, that means we are now good to go for the weekend and can finally get sailing. Hooraah!!

Second half of the weekend

For Sunday, we took a break from fighting with masthead wires and such like to go to Beaulieu Boat Jumble. This is the first time we have been to this event which seems to be as important in some people's calendar as the two boatshows. It was a very enjoyable day out and we even got some useful stuff.

We didn't see much of the Beaulieu estate though we did also look round the motor museum which is well recommended.

We managed to buy a sheep crook boat hook, some cockpit cushions and most usefully, a pelican hook bottle screw for the inner forestay.

Apart from the extremely indifferent lunch it was a great day out.

Two steps forward, two sideways and one backwards

It was mostly a good weekend with frustratingly lovely weather. She has been afloat for two weeks now and we are still in no position to move her. The two steps forward involved getting the rig sorted out. We have set up the standing rigging and bent on the sails. The picture is as we got the jib ready for use. The two steps sideways were discovered by Audrey. Some of the wires from the masthead had had to be cut which means that we need connectors for them under the mast. These are for the VHF aerial and the data lines from the masthead wind indicator. Needless to say, we were not able to get our hands on a crimp fit co-ax adaptor and we need to work on a suitable connector plug for the wind instruments. At least both those tasks are easy to achieve.

Of more import, is the one step back. The engine has so far refused to start. I had a go at pumping some fuel through and the glass bowl on the primary filter filled up with a nasty brown sludge. Clearly we have some contamination in our fuel. I sought to pump out the fuel and filter it. The fuel we managed to pump out looked quite clean so we put it back in the tank using our water trap filter and no rubbish was kept back though we did make a bit of a mess of the cockpit. I then changed the fuel filters and sure enough, there was quite a lot of rubbish in the primary filter. I bled the system through and little gunk appeared in the primary filter though she still refused to start. I suspect now that we do have some dirt in the fuel line and it is time to call in a professional. The Chaldler at Emsworth has recommended one at Thornham who I will have to ring and see if he is available. Hopefully, that will not all prove too expensive!

Assuming all is well, we will still move her next weekend though I may try to take Thursday off work to speed things up with the final wiring and such like.

It was very satisfying to get the sails on at last and feel like a sailing boat again.!

Engine fun now

We went down on Sunday to find her beautifully afloat and the mast in the more familiar position. No more crouching under the horizontal mast to get down the companionway. However, the rigging has not been tensioned properly and the boom hadn't been fitted either. At least we fixed the boom and Audrey started work on connecting all the masthead wires.

I had a go at starting the engine to no avail. After operating the pump a bit the fuel in the primary filter took on this awful brown sludge colour so we seem to have been afflicted by the dreaded diesel bug.

Next weekend will now be dedicated to getting our engine going again. The plan is to pump out the dirty diesel, change all the fuel filters, see if we can filter out the sludge and then refuel with clean fuel and hope for the best.

I fitted the AIS box to the chart table bulkhead and we will look at connecting it up properly soon. I will have to get the bosuns chair off Matthew and pay a visit up the mast. The idea of putting the arial at the spreaders is not now appealing. The GPS receiver can go on the pushpit as previously planned anyway.

Always something to worry about anyway.

Located aa Trysail

More good news. We have located a trysail. There was a wanted ad on the ROA website and when it also appeared in the quarterly journal I was contacted by Ian Nicholson who has one available "new and unused". We have agreed a suitable price and I can pick it up from his Daughter who lives outside Devizes - conveniently close to my Mother.

Another thing ticked off the list of stuff to get.

Of course, the list of things to do is still growing. Just now I remembered that we need to rig up the preventer properly to make it easy to rig when running downwind.

Boat in the Water

I got the call from Emsworth and our lovely Rival is back in the water now. The mast should have been stepped now. Now we just have to get her ready for the sea and move her to Plymouth.

We are still holding out for the bank holiday weekend but may, hopefully be able to fit a quick shakedown sail in before then. I am going down soon to finish getting her ready for sea. As ever, this seems to involve endless lists.

1. Run engine up and make sure it is working OK
2. Bend on the sails
3. Start process of fitting the AIS jobbie.
4. Sort out boding wire for zinc anode
5. Sort out process for flying the cruising chute.
6. Loads of other stuff.

Plans Keep Changing

Owing to all sorts of other committments, we are now not likely to get the boat moved till the bank holiday at the end of April. We have provisionally booked the Friday off as leave and I will have to let Emsworth know our plans. It is particularly galling to have such perfect weather at the moment - the forecast is even for northeasters at the moment.

We will go Beaulieu now. Specifically in search of a trysail but also for any other bargains. It might be fun to go there by boat if we can. We will have to give it some thought.

AIS arrived

It was actually sent yesterday but I only picked it up today. At least we do now have a "simple" black box AIS transponder and we don't need to get a chart plotter and all that sort of rubbish.

Initial plans are to install it at the chart table with the GPS aerial on the pushpit and the VHF aerial at the spreaders. Ideally, of course, it would be at the masthead but that would interfere too much with the radio aerial. Echomaster Marine say that this will work OK so I will have to work out a way of getting the co-ax down the mast.

repaired hatch finished

After a lot of dithering, we do now have the rotten plywood in the cockpit hatch cover finished now. The SP expoxy coating on the inside is just curing. It was an interesting experience doing this as it is a very long time since I have tried any sort of carpentry and I have never worked with the modern epoxy stuff.

Essentially, as described earlier, I chiseled out the rotten ply and then cut a new piece of ply to fit and glued it in. Things were complicated a bit by my managing to break one of the edge pieces off and the end product is not therefore quite as good as it might have been. At least I know what to do for the next one. My error was not to ensure that the facing teak and edging pieces were both well bonded and sealed from the inside. Quantities of the expoxy seeped through which has made the outside not quite as neat as it might be.

The SP epoxy is fascinating stuff and is able to take almost any form you need depending on what you add to it. Most of my stuff has been done as a glue with microfibers added but there was also a lot of filling to do with the microballoons and finally I have done a varnish type coating on the plywood with no additives at all. If this last bit is a success, I may thing about using it on all our brightwork.

Easter Sailing/Delivery Trip Scuppered

The spate of gales we have had have now scuppered our start to the season. Today was too windy for Emsworth to launch us and now we have missed the tides which means another two weeks ashore before we can think about getting launched and out of the harbour.

Oh well, it doesn't look like we would have been able to sail anywhere anyway given the weather forecasts which are a string of low pressures bringing alternating freezing weather and gales. We will just have to see if we can have any luck later in the month. Grr though.