Ready to go again, just need the weather!

Well, the non-cruise continues! Having returned to Dartmouth we spent Monday putting Maunie against the quay wall to dry out onto the mud over low tide – we’d heard a worrying rattling noise from the propeller and suspected that we’d got a line wrapped around it when recovering the liferaft aboard. The propeller has a Stripper - a set of knives just in front of it - and this had neatly sliced through the liferaft painter but it was possible that there was a rope tail still wrapped around the shaft. When the tide finally dropped away, though, there was nothing to be found – whatever it was had been thrown off, so we could stop worrying.

On Tuesday we drove over to Plymouth to leave the liferaft with the very friendly people at its manufacturers, Ocean Safety; if the raft isn’t damaged they’ll be able to service it, re-fill the gas bottle (which inflates it) and supply a new canister but it’ll take a couple of weeks. We then visited the offices of Pantaenius, the insurers, who were also very friendly and helpful so, after lunch at Queen Anne Battery marina, we returned to the boat.

Not having a liferaft aboard would put a stop to our plan to sail to France but our friends Jayne and Joe have come to the rescue – they’ve really kindly loaned us their raft from Claire Louise, so we’ve promised not to drop it! So we’re now planning ahead again, but watching the weather forecast with interest. Whilst Wednesday was a lovely sunny day, the wind was resolutely from the south and the forecast for today was for a Force 5-7, possibly Force 8! Sure enough we had really heavy rain last night as the front passed over and it's cold and windy today so we’re going no-where for the moment.

We’ve made good use of our time in harbour, though. Yesterday we refitted the cockpit bimini (a posh sunshade for use in hot climates) having repaired it. It came with the boat but looked as though a mouse had got into it whilst it was stored in the original owner’s garage so we had to replace several panels with our fantastic new Sailrite sewing machine. It looks as though it’ll be really useful (but perhaps not for this holiday having looked at the latest weather).




Today we’ve been ashore for a slap-up cooked breakfast at Café Alf Resco, a Dartmouth institution, and are now hoping that the rain will clear so we can go walking along the coast path. A huge square-rigged cruise ship has just come into harbour – apparently they were supposed to be visiting Scilly but aborted this plan due to the weather, so we’re not the only ones frustrated by adverse conditions.






All being well, we’ll be off tomorrow for Brittany Take Two – the forecast is NW F4-5,which would be perfect. Fingers crossed!