Good but tiring days sailing

General weather - Sou'westerly 2-3/4, couple of dead spots where wind died.

Bit of chop later in the day once the sea breeze kicked in.

Total time afloat - 09:20 hrs

Distance covered - approx 40km

Crew - none. Still making sure I can sail and do everything single handed.

Yesterday was an excellent day for going out and messing about in boats. Plenty of wind but also some sunshine to go with it.

Sunday was the second day of some Laser championship or other and I had initially offered to help out with safety cover. As it was going to be such a good day I decided instead to be a little selfish and go out in me boat like.

I finished loading the car and got down to the slipway for about 07:45hrs.

The slipway was chocka with Laser dinghies, trailers etc. and my boat trailer was blocked in. Not a happy bunny, but decided to get the boat loaded and changed, by which time there might be people around to move them.

Finally managed to launch at about 08:30hrs. There wasn't much wind at this time and there was a definite chill in the air. As usual I backed the trailer into the water and parked the car. The boat came off the trailer easy enough and I motored it to the pontoon to moor it while I recovered the car and trailer. During the brief period away the lasers had started to fill the gap again. The didn't have any concept of the phrase 'public slipway'. Luckily driving a defender landrover has its advantages. With the trailer and car parked, I went down to the boat to get going.

Just as I was setting off the committee boat for the lasers came steaming past barely giving me room to move. These guys were not making any friends here.

As is usual when I'm single handed I decided it would be easier to rig up while swinging from one of the buoys in front of the MBC. This is okay at the moment as a lot of them are clear. When the season progresses I'll have to try rigging on the move or anchor somewhere. I'll worry about that when it becomes an issue.

Once rigged I started to drift slowly out across The Hoe. Not a lot of wind in evidence to start with. After about 20 mins I decided it would be better if I motored out a bit and see what would happen. I couldn't find the kill cord for the engine. Thinking I'd lost it I had to improvise using a piece of string. Luckily this worked fine and I set off. I didn't want to go to far as I hadn't brought any more fuel and the can was only about 1/4 to 1/2 full. This early in the game I haven't yet worked out how far I could've got if I needed to.

After a relatively short boost I managed to find a bit of wind to get me going. I decided to head for the Eastern entrance of The Sound as it seemed like quite an easy straight(ish) run. Just as I was about to get through a grey funnel vessel decided to come through at the same time as the wind died. All I could do when I received 5 or so blasts on the horn was to turn around a couple of times.

I came up behind them and exited The Sound into quite a large swell from the SW. As the original plan was to go past Rame Head I headed in a westerly direction. As I got near West Tinker the wind died completely. As I sat there waiting for it to reappear, the bottom of the sail was whip-cracking over my head. It got really annoying.

It looked like there might have been a bit of wind nearer Penlee Point and Rame Head, so I decided to have another go on the engine.

Once I got out of the wind shadow, I set off for the headland again under wind power alone. Lovely and peaceful. The wind by this point had picked up enough for the gunwales to get wet.

I only stayed on the West of Rame Head for a small time. Due to the fact that I was single handed and the wind was from the SW I couldn't do anything other than have a quick look. I did find a small beach which might be nice to visit in the summer.

I decided to head for Cawsand bay to have a quiet period at anchor. Took me a little while to get there though as the wind died off completely under the headland. I had to resort to the engine once again. It's certainly useful to have onboard.

I didn't stay too long at anchor, because it was a little chilly sat still. As it was it was, just enough to see how the anchor was working, set up the day signal for anchoring etc.

After leaving the bay, the wind looked excellent for a tack over to Shag Stone at the eastern side of the Plymouth Breakwater. For a little while I was tempted to go through between the Mewstone and the mainland, but after looking at the charts I decided against it as I don't have an echo sounder. It was also time to head back. I thought it'd take me an hour to get back and then a further hour to get everything put away.

I packed the boat away and moored to the pontoon. As I walked away to get the car one of the powerboats from the Laser event was going to go past at quite a speed. He slowed down but only after I asked him to. Nonetheless a wake still caused the boat to roll quite a bit. Thankfully I'd put enough fenders on.

Once I got to the trailer I found that the slipway was again blocked by Laser trailers being recovered. They were quite ready to move when asked however. One vehicle had been left on the slipway itself. When I asked if it could be moved for me to have a clearer run with my trailer stating that it was public slipway one guy said 'Well there's been an event'. Yet again showing

a complete lack of understanding of the phrase 'public slipway'.

As I brought the boat onto it's trailer I got an offer of help from a couple of jet bikers. I thanked them kindly but said that I was trying to do it on my own as practice but may call on them should I fail completely. Fortunately it went relatively smoothly, and I only had to take the landrover out once, to re-align the boat.

It would be a big bonus to have some guide arms on the trailer though.

Once on the hard the two jet bikers commented to me about the awful load of rubbish that had been left by the Laser crowd. I myself have been to lots of events round the country with PYSC at NSSA events, and when we left a camp site we always did a sweep to clean up after ourselves. It didn't look as though anything had been done here though. It was a case of 'Why should I do it?'

After putting the boat away, I went around and picked up most of the rubbish. Not impressed.

Apart from the hassle with the Laser crowd it was all in all a great day out practising. Only thing to do now is get further and further.

PYSC website updates

Now trying to get the Plymouth Youth Sailing website up to date to reduce the large amount of attacks and vulnerabilities in the old Joomla system.

It's taking me a while as I'm not the most savvy computer person and am relying on a friend of mine for the steps while I do the actual donkey work.

Hopefully I'll get it finished soon. Maybe before I go away to work even?

Sailing around The Sound

General weather - Southerly 3-4, 1-2m swell in exposed areas. Good visibility.

Total time afloat - 03:41 hrs

Total distance taken from GPS tracker - 20.5km

Today was another test day to see if I could launch and recover without assistance, as well as test out other things on the boat.

Launching -

I used the defender to launch at the east slipway at MBC. This is the shallowest of the slipways but I had taken so long to actually get ready the tide had gone out too far for me to attempt the west slipway.

After getting the trailer in the water, launching was relatively easy, although I did get a little water in the wellies as I jumped aboard. I had to put the boat on the pontoon so that I could recover the landy and trailer from the slipway. This didn't go quite as planned as I still have to get used to driving the boat with the small outboard. Oh well that's what fenders are for I guess.

Getting ready -

At the moment I still like to raise the sails and get ready for actually sailing on a swinging mooring where there is less chance of doing damage to me or anything else.

I tried to lower the centreboard, but it seemed to be stuck. After trying to waggle the recovery rope and consulting with Mr Lerigo, I had to take the cover off and try to figure out what was wrong. It turned out to be a problem with the pulley system, in that the rope had jumped off a wheel. A little fiddling and it was sorted. May have to look at replacing the rope if it happens too often. The screws holding down the cover don't seem to be very well secured.

As the wind was a little higher than previous sails, I decided to test out the reefing system. I needed to put some small ropes in the sail but it worked as expected.

At 1230hrs I finally set off for a tour of The Sound and environs.

My first plan was to go to Picklecombe, Bovisand, Jennycliff and back home. As it happened I ended up in Cawsand bay.

While being rocked about by a good sized swell I let out the anchor, after first making sure the lines were all attached to something.

Wasn't too bad sitting at anchor even in the swell. I think it was made better by making sure the line was attached to the D ring at the bow rather than on top of the deck.

The sail back was uneventful.

Recovery -

Recovery was wetter than the launch. A lot wetter.

The tide was now rising and there was a stiff breeze across the slipway. Neither of these conditions made for a dry recovery. After getting the landrover and trailer in position I drove the boat round using the outboard.

I tried to put the boat straight onto the trailer but of course it was having none of it. I eventually had to stand on the trailer to try and pull the hull unto the correct alignment. Unfortunately the side wind was making this unrealistic and I had to get into the water way above the top of my wellies and indeed my underwear.

I managed it okay but will definitely be using my dry trousers from now on.

All in all though a good days sailing and I expect to go further once I have more and more sorted out.

Testing the Hawk.

For the last few months I have been hankering for a sailing boat of some description. Something which was small enough to handle on my own but large enough to be comfortable and could take crew if they wanted to come along. The Hawk 20 seemed to fit the bill, and one was going to be available soon.

My good friend Maison tried to convince me that this wasn't the only boat on the ocean and maybe something with a cabin would be more appropriate.

As usual I wanted instant satisfaction of some sort and wouldn't be swayed unless something was desperately wrong with it.

Finally in Mar 2010, a Hawk 20 did indeed become available.

Mr Webster helped me check it over and pick it up from Bovisand on Sat 13th Mar 2010. There were a few things we noticed but nothing major. Either they didn't exist or we missed them. The original plan was for me to get it launched at MBC in the afternoon and go for a good test sail.

Thankfully Mr Lerigo was on hand to help me out. As he's the bosun at MBC and has dealt with their Hawks for a number of years now he's the ideal dude to turn to. As we went over the boat, and discovered various things which needed doing, we decided that it would be best to test sail it on the Sunday morning, as there would be safety cover for the Laser series, available in case anything went wrong.

Simon, Gill and Fin were down for the weekend so we broke for lunch at the Mountbatten pub.

Sunday morning came around and I was up early. Took me a little while to rig up but I was soon ready to go.

Mr Lerigo helped me launch. The weather wasn't too bad in the morning. Not a lot of sunshine and not a lot of wind. I wasn't planning on staying out too long, as the safety cover would disappear at about noon. It was just to be long enough to see if anything was obviously wrong.

Thankfully I couldn't see anything immediately obvious and considered it a success.