Preparation and shakedown sail

On Saturday evening I snuck off to fit the boom and sails.  An interesting row out in a 6' inflatable with an 8' boom, sails, cover and various other bits loaded in :)  As always nothing ever goes to plan, the topping lift was the wrong side of the spreaders so I had to spend a while trying to throw it back through.. eventually done  the boom was fitted.  Next was the Genoa, that went up remarkably easy. This year I removed the strop from the bottom of the Genoa to bring it a bit lower.  Finally I fitted the new main,  this was a surprise; it's so much bigger than the old one.  It comes nearly to the end of the boom and I had to lower the goose neck for it to be raised fairly taut.   It also barely fits under the sail cover so that's another priority.

Sunday's weather wasn't quite so nice but still worthy of a trip down to Ciao Bella to put her through her paces.  It seems like an awful long time since I'd been out for a sail and I found myself a little apprehensive.  I raised the main while still on the mooring and then let the mooring go.  Back at the tiller I set up the autohelm to keep us on a safe course while I unfurled the Genoa and tidied the anchor chain.  

I reacquainted myself  with the handling again fairly quickly an decided to go for a trip around Brownsea Island.. and maybe stop off for a stroll and some food.

The weather was forecast as Variable F3 or less, which it was early on.  However after leaving Brownsea it was definately F4 or above as there were white horses all around.  I put in the first reef on the main and rolled away a big chunk of the Genoa while rounding the top of the Island. It was great to be back in the saddle, as it were.  There were some teething problems.  The Autohelm string come off  (There'll be a separate post about that); The screw in the middle of the winch came loose, not sure if I just didn't tighten it enough or whether it should have some thread lock on it; The button on the back of the GPS unscrewed itself and when I tried to pull it out of my hand crafted bracket, it made a break for freedom and is now somewhere in the harbour; and finally I had to adjust the number of turns on the furling drum to give me enough line to reach the cleat. 

Beyond that it was a great day which I celebrated by have Coffee and a pasty at the Cafe on Brownsea Island. Considering I had the engine leg down all day and was towing the tender I saw over 5knots on the GPS at times.  The other thing which really impressed me was that I was able to sail quite well with just the main up, I found this out while trying to pick up the mooring without using the engine.  I was able to sail in circuits fairly accurately which is something that I couldn't do with the old baggy sail that I had.
All in all a good day :)

Track of sail and walk :) Sailing only track and cummulative distance on the Log page.