The trouble with normal life is that it all too easily gets in the way of sailing, so we blocked out the month of June to go off cruising. The problem was that the weather gods didn't get the memo.
After a couple of weeks of the hottest May on record, the start of June saw a succession of very unseasonable gales so our plans to get across to Brittany were suddenly put on hold. We did try an overnight passage on the first Thursday of the month, in between two weather systems but sea state in the English Channel, left over from days of strong winds, was pretty horrible and we turned back after a couple of hours.
Back in Dartmouth we saw the next gale approaching on the Saturday but, in the meantime had managed to negotiate a last-minute and unplanned haul-out at Darthaven Marina. Our Thursday night foray had told us that Maunie just felt slow and we'd realised that in only two months afloat she'd gained a tenacious coating of green weed on her hull.
Talking to the yard guys, they said everyone has been reporting really back weed fouling this season and it seems that CopperCoat just doesn't cope with it. I'd tried scrubbing and scraping as much as I could reach from the dinghy but the stuff really didn't want to release its grip. Paul, the man with the super-powerful jet washer did a meticulous job and too about 90 minutes to get the hull clean.
Back afloat, with an extra knot of speed, we fled the impending gale to pick up a mooring in Dittisham. Even there, the boat heeled and tugged at the mooring in the gusts so we didn't get the best night's sleep but it was reassuring to have our anti-chafe mooring line rigged, with a spare added for good measure,
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| Our mooring line has a section of chain spliced into the middle to stop the metal ring of the mooring from chafing through the rope. |
We finally got away the following Tuesday - more photos and stories to follow....
