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.

Launch day

With much help from Mr Wood yesterday, I managed to get Ciao Bella's mast up and eventually float her off the trailer.

Hooked up and waiting to be strapped down and mast loaded.

With all the pre-ample of loading the mast, filling the fuel tank, fixing the trailer board and dealing with all the other stuff that slows you down out of the way, we made our way down to the slipway at Baiter park.   Raising the mast seemed to be a bit more hassle this year for some reason.  Is the mast heavier or am I just feeling older?  Anyway, the mast was finally up and all shrouds attached. We mounted the engine and attacked the anchor chain, By this time Paul needed to head off  leaving me to push her down the slipway.

As it was neaps the water was a bit thin, I pushed the trailer right to the flags but she still didn't float free.  The high tide still had some time to go I climbed aboard and waited for some movement.  Despite the good weather forecast a particularly nasty shower went over.  Being inside waiting for the tide gave me the opportunity to check the seacocks and ensure the new heads pumped as expected.  Eventually the I could feel some movement so I started the engine and moved her away from the end of the slip and dropped the anchor.  I paddled back to shore in the inflatable to recover the trailer.  No hope there, the wheels had dropped off the end of the slipway and there was no way I could pulled her back on my own.  The rope that I'd attached wasn't long enough to reach the car so after much huffing and puffing I decided to leave it there until the morning and come back with some longer rope.

I motored over to the mooring, a dizzy 1.36NM :)  It did give me the opportunity to try out the Autohelm,  I'm really happy with this as it will make life so much easier, particularly when I  need to move around the boat for things like stowing the anchor chain etc.

Back on the mooring and everything tidied away I paddled back to the sailing club. There was a good crowd there as it was race night.  Good to have a chat and a beer with the guys.  Arjen kindly offered to drive me back to Baiter to pick my car up which saved me about 30 mins walking, thanks Arjen much appreciated.

Swinging on her mooring

Foot note... I got up at 6:30 this morning, grabbed a few bits and headed back to Baiter, stopping at B&Q for 30m of cheap blue poly rope.  The trailer was still there when I got there, I don't suppose any one would wade out in the middle of the night to pinch it.  Even with the extra 30m I still didn't have enough rope but fortunately people were starting to turn up so an extra bit was soon forthcoming. 

The trailer is now back on my front garden waiting for the bearings to be cleaned and re-greased. 

Autohelm and GPS bracket.

As launch approaches I am able to keep knocking off little jobs.   While de-rigging last year I managed to to pull the plug off the GPS data cable,  a new cable arrived today at the extortionate cost of £18.99.  Still I have to have it.

While thinking about the GPS I decided that I needed some kind of bracket to hold it.   In true bodger style I rummaged through the garage to see what I could use.  All I could find was some sheet Ali,  I knocked up the bracket below, If it works out well I'll get a bracket made out of stainless.

The cut out in the side is to allow the Data plug to fit in and allow the unit to sit upright.  I cut a small block of wood to fit in the bottom of the channel to give it a bit more support. A stainless bracket wont need this.

The unit sits nicely out of the way of getting knocked but perfectly positioned for viewing.  I still need to wire it in but I shall ask John, my good friend, neighbour and occasional crew to do this as he will make a much better job of it than me.

The other wee job that I've done this evening is fit the plug for the Autohelm and run the cable back to the fuse board.  I temporarily connected it up to ensure it works.. which it did.  I'll ask John to complete this as well as he's made such a tidy job of the rest of it.

More stripping

Mrs Ciao Bella and myself slipped away for a couple of days in and around Bath. We stayed in The George, a fantastic old Inn from the early 1500's. As well as the Roman Baths, shopping, cake & coffee we also found some fabulous pubs and cider houses :0)

The George Inn at Norton St Philip. A great place to stay.

Tuckers Grave Inn, a hard to find traditional cider house.

Despite this, I did still managed to get a bit done on Sunday afternoon.  As I still had some strippit left I applied that to as much of the Mirror as I could.I left that on overnight and gave it a good Jet wash off in the morning.  I'm quite impressed, I haven't been near it with a scraper yet but considering the limited amount that I had it has done a great job.  The other worry was that it might attack the taped seams, these are absolutely fine.  The wood is pretty solid, the only filler that I can see is where small knocks have been repaired.

Back to business, after the strippit had been jet washed off.

While the Strippit was working it's magic I climbed aboard Ciao Bella to see what else could be done.. who says blokes can't multi task?  The headlining needed refitting after I had removed it to fit the clutch on the coach-roof.  This was an absolute bugger to get back in and as it has a tendency to slip out of the slots I decided to drill and screw it into position. This I did on the starboard side as well.

Looking around me I could see that she needed a right good tidy up so I started chucking everything that was in the cabin out into the cockpit.  I stuck my head under the starboard quarter berth to retrieve some junk and was confronted with and odour like no other.  The rear of the bilge keel is hollow and when I looked down it there was about 3 or 4 inches of black stinking water in there.  Unfortunately the only way I could think of getting it out was to roll my sleeves up and reach down with a sponge to soak it up.

I was worried that a mouse may have fallen in and drowned but the smell was from bits of thin ply that had rotted in the water.. who'd have thought that would smell so bad.

I spent the rest of the evening tidying and putting tools away that I thought had long since vanished.

I nice piece of good fortune while sat it the cockpit sorting the wheat from the chaff, one of my neighbours stopped for a chat, the upshot being that he has a trailer winch that I can have and also a roll of genuine boat quality foam backed upholstery fabric in Tan.

Planning to get her in this coming weekend, Woe betide anyone who has other plans for me :)

Mirror mirror on the wall

Most of Sunday was spent at the sailing club helping with the spring clean and attaching new galvanised ladders to the pier. It was bitingly cold but that was fended off with Nigel's ballistically hot Chilli and rice... Thanks Nigel, it was just the job.

I was home by 4:30 and still in my scruffs so I thought I'd spend an hour or two on the mirror dinghy.  I had previously started to DA the paint back but had decided that it really all needs to come off.   I set it up on boxes to help with working height then set about it with some paint stripper.

After a few minutes the paint started to blister up quite nicely, I thought this might turn out to be an easy job.

Not so, it was quite sporadic where it wanted to work and where it didn't.  I left it for an hour to soak in (recommends 20 mins on the tin) but it didn't really make any difference.   I scraped off the best I could then tried sanding, too slow as I'd run out of 80 grit pads, and scraping with a heat gun; really need a narrower scraper than my wall paper scraper. As  neither was really effective I tidied up again and will reconvene when I have some more paint stripper, coarse pads and a better scraper.  Watch this space for progress but don't hold your breath  :) 

Lines back to cockpit

Some years ago I bought a double clutch off eBay for Jelly Bean. It sat in the garage until this morning when I finally decided to fit it to Ciao Bella. This will let me lead the topping lift and spinnaker halyard back to the cockpit. The main halyard is on the starboard side and the genoa doesn't need to come back as it is on a roller reefer.
I had been putting this off as I thought I would need one of them fancy deck organiser things which lay flat on the coach roof. Then I saw a picture on the 'Yacht Zephyr' blog showing a triple block feeding into a triple clutch. So this is what I will do, I have put a 'U' bolt through the coach roof in readiness :).

Time to work in the evening.

The benefits of BST where noticed today... despite the cold, I was able to do a few little chores on Ciao Bella after work today before it got dark.  I managed to get some varnish on the grab rails, interior woodwork and flag staff.
The only thing that I really need to do before putting her in is to fit the Bulgin connector for the tiller pilot and wire it in, I don't suppose either John or myself fancy hanging upside down in the lazarette trying to crimp cables while bucking around on swinging mooring.
Not sure when I'm going to get a chance to launch her, Easter holidays have really got in the way this year.