A dramatic anchorage - and the wind is to return!

 As backdrops to anchorages go, it doesn't get much better than this!

We spent a peaceful night beside St Michael's Mount near Penzance and awoke to gorgeous sunshine.

There's a strict 'no drones' exclusion zone over the island, castle and beach so we had to fly to the west of our anchorage to get these shots 

The island has been owned by the same family, St Aubyn, since the mid 1600's and was once a major trading port (though the little harbour dries at low water). In the English Civil War it was a Royalist stronghold for four years, allowing arms and supplies to be brought in from France. The St Aubyn family still lives in part of the castle but it was given over to the National Trust in 1954 so it's now a major tourist destination. At low water you can walk across to the island on a causeway and boats then ferry visitors across when the tide returns.

At last we have a forecast for some wind! We'll leave early this afternoon as a gentle breeze builds to take us round Land's End, with some useful tidal assistance.

Sunday evening forecast

As we head up the Irish Sea we'll have a period of fairly brisk winds behind us on Monday but they should calm down by the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Monday afternoon forecast

Our plan is to get up to the coast of Northern Ireland by Tuesday evening, though there are some tricky tidal gates to deal with at the North Channel (between Northern Ireland and SW Scotland). We'll report back in a couple of days!

Playing with the big boys in Falmouth

 We're in Falmouth, after a surprisingly good sail (given the low-wind forecast) from Fowey and have spent a night in the rather posh Port Pendennis Marina. Surprisingly, it's actually cheaper than the council-run yacht haven just nearby and has the advantage of some glamourous yachts to look at. The biggest here is the beautiful 179ft ketch, Adele.

Even before the current media coverage of Russian ownership of many (not this one), we've always been pretty appalled by the 'look at me, I have money to burn' nature of super-yachts but this one is just beautiful. Built in 2005, Adele has cruised the world with her first owner and was refitted in 2018; she looks moderately comfortable down below, judging by these photos on the internet:

Adele is not the only interesting boat here - one of the older Volvo Ocean Race boats, Telefonica, is here. She looks a bit tatty but is obviously having work done on her:

We watched the cruise ship (in the background of this photo) reverse neatly out of its berth:

This morning, after a run to the shops for food provisions and the use of the marina washing machines, we'll head up the Fal to find a quieter spot to stay. The forecast remains a bit variable in terms of wind but we think we'll be heading for Scilly on Saturday or Sunday. By Monday it looks as though we'll have some south-westerly breezes to take us northwards. Fingers crossed.

The first sailing video of the season

 

The first passage yesterday wasn't exactly taxing so we took the opportunity to film a short video - you can find it here: https://youtu.be/LDXmrubHW1g

Day 2 was a no-wind affair so we had a very easy 3-hour motor to Fowey. We're surprised how empty the place it - this time last year it was heaving with holidaymakers but we guess many of them have now re-rediscovered the delights (?) of air travel.

All's well aboard.

Another adventure begins

 After a frenetic couple of weeks of sorting, packing and transporting, we have moved back aboard Maunie for another big trip. The house, garden and, most importantly, Bertie the cat, are in the care of our friends Paul and Tracey who have taken up residence, along with Huxley the Labrador, and we're re-adjusting to life aboard Maunie.

The plan for the next three months is to re-trace some of our track of last summer - up to the west coast of Scotland and the Outer Hebrides. However, this year we want to spend a reasonable chunk of time in the Hebrides before (weather and time permitting) sailing to Orkney and then round the NE corner of Scotland, down to Inverness and through the Caledonian Canal (which links into Loch Ness) to Fort William before returning home.

'Weather permitting' is, of course, an important proviso in such plans and it hasn't started terribly well, to be honest. This week's forecast is for very gentle winds - this is tomorrow's chart:

However, we have learned to be optimistic and to search for little weather windows and our first sail today, 32nm from the Dart to the River Yealm, was a good example. We fully expected to have to motor the whole passage but managed a really lovely hour with the spinnaker flying.

In the River Yealm on a drizzly evening

The whole visitors' pontoon to ourselves

So, we'll take each day as it comes and hope that normal south-westerlies will return early next week to send us north up the Irish Sea. We'll update this blog as and when we can.

Afloat and planning new adventures

We are very pleased to report that Maunie is safely back in the water! The insurance survey, carried out the week before launching, went really well and we were impressed with our surveyor, Nick Vass, who was hugely knowledgeable and helpful. Needless to say, he really liked Maunie! We haven't received his report yet but he gave us a good verbal review - a couple of minor issues but otherwise the boat got a big thumbs up.

The last winter job before relaunch was to plug a rather large hole in the bottom of the hull. We'd removed the seacocks, which allow cooling water to be pumped to the engine and generator, since it was 10 years since we'd replaced the originals with good quality bronze fittings. The seacocks are actually a trio of fittings - a skin fitting which bolts through the fibreglass hull, a ball valve which screws into the skin fitting and can be shut in the unlikely event of a water hose failing, and a strainer which filters out any weed or other debris to prevent it being sucked into the cooling water pumps.

We'd realised at the end of last season that the ball valve for the engine had failed - the handle turned but too easily - clearly the valve was stuck, luckily in the half-open position so we could still use the engine. This was obviously a major safety concern, so removing and replacing the skin fittings and valves was a must-do job on our winter list. 

Three seacocks with water-strainers. Left to right, they supply the generator, engine and water-maker with salt water. The valve handles are in the closed position here.

The engine strainer, ball valve and skin fitting. The easiest way to remove it was to cut the outside of the skin fitting off and push it upwards through the hull.

The broken ball-valve. Still partly open even though the handle is in the closed position - not good!

The generator strainer is polished up and the new valve and skin fitting test-fitted, ready to go back into the boat.

Everything refitted and ready for launch. 

It's very important to bed the skin fittings with plenty of sealant!

Of course, we filmed a short video of the process for those who just love a technical video! https://youtu.be/nNf30nQZj_c

Launch day, last Tuesday, all went very smoothly though it was an early start to catch the tide.

Last chance for underwater checks before we launch

Ready for the hour's motor down river to the mooring

Maunie is pretty much ready to go now, with all the sails fitted. We'll aim to get down to her early next week for a test sail and to add various bits of kit that are still at home. Amongst the items to go back aboard is our Icom long-range SSB radio that was such a wonderful thing as we crossed the Pacific. Our record distance for boat-to-boat voice communications was nearly 5,000 miles when we were in New Zealand and our friends Ana & Colin were approaching the coast of Chile. 

We don't use the SSB much in UK waters - the normal VHF radio (with a range of perhaps 20 miles) plus mobile phones are easier to use - but we felt it was time to give the machine a bit of tlc. The metal case had become a bit rust-spotted in places (it sits near the main companionway) so we took it off, removed all the paint, cleaned the metal to remove any traces of rust and gave it six coats of spray paint. 

A satisfyingly chunky bit of kit. The radio is about 25 years old so has lots of knobs and buttons to play with - it now looks as good as new.

So the plan? We're aiming to be back aboard at the beginning of May for another Scottish adventure. Stay tuned for more news, as they say in radio circles.

Winter Jobs - Part 4

The moment when we put Maunie back into the water is very near - next Tuesday, in fact! So we've been busy finishing the main winter maintenance jobs and have started to reload the boat with sails and cruising kit. 

Having re-faced the floors, which now look wonderful, some of the surrounding woodwork looked distinctly tatty in contrast, the worst offender being the door into the forward cabin. It became clear that, when the door was originally fitted, the bottom edge had been planed to fit but no protective varnish had been applied. As a result, damp had penetrated the facing veneer and it had stated to lift and flake:

We took the decision to strip off a section of the damaged surface, apply a veneer patch (in order to get a level surface) and then apply a single sheet of teak veneer to the whole door:

The old veneer was scored with a knife and a sharp chisel was used to remove the veneer. The metal rule clamped across the surface was there to prevent the chisel going too far!

Applying veneer patches

Carefully applying a single sheet of veneer, making sure we didn't trap any air bubbles. The veneer had a coating of adhesive already applied so it was a case of peeling back the protective plastic coating progressively as we moved up the door

Very pleased with the results, after an application of wood stain and six coats of varnish. Just the door handle and hinges to refit.

The suppliers of the veneer really liked the photos and the video that we sent them so Graham has produced a version for their website, complete with their logos, which will appear soon. The original video is here: https://youtu.be/HFMF4y5ltfk

The short warm spell a couple of weeks ago was the ideal opportunity to remove Maunie's winter covers and refit her sails and sprayhood:

In all it took us a couple of hours but there's a 2-minute time-lapse of the process here: https://youtu.be/9qMadkpK3gg

The full boat condition survey, required by the insurance company, took place on Thursday and, as we'd hoped, the surveyor was very happy with Maunie so we're all ready to launch.

Of course, we'll never run out of boat jobs but another important one was to look after a rather smaller boat, our inflatable tender. During the sailing season it's stored in the Kinsgwear 'toast rack' where dinghies stand upright on their transoms (Blunt ends!) between metal hoops - just like slices of toast in a toast rack. Exposed to the elements, especially the degrading UV of bright sunshine, many of the boats look pretty worn out but we always put a cover on ours so, at 15 years old it still looks remarkably good:

However, our covers have been made using £25 sheets of "UV Resistant" woven plastic waterproof sheeting which we have found last only one season. Not a very sustainable solution, we thought, so we utilised some left-over boat cover material (off-cuts from our cockpit dodgers project of a couple of years ago) plus some new, long-life Sunbrella (it's fully waterproof and the light colour will reflect the heat of the sun prevent the dinghy baking inside it on hot days) to make a cover that should last 10 years or so. A long zip that we cut from a damaged cover that we found in a skip in New Zealand (we love a good boatyard skip!) completed the components so out came the trusty Sailrite sewing machine.

Bertie helps with the measurements! The old and damaged plastic cover is used as a template

The boat stands upright on the ends of the two outer tubes so the cover is open at the bottom for good airflow to prevent mould.

If all goes to plan, our next update will be on the water - we can't wait!

Winter Boat Jobs, Part 3

We're making good progress with the jobs list. The major achievement last week was to rejuvenate the tatty-looking floorboards in the galley and fore cabin.

Fore cabin: Before.....

.....and after

Galley: Before....

...and After.

Here's a quick video to give you an idea of what was involved over two and a half days:

We are really pleased with the results, though it was a fairly stressful project. There's a more detailed version on YouTube if you want to see the full fun and games - click HERE

There's more flooring to do, of course, so we'll share some photos of the finished results aboard the boat at a later date.

Today's project has been another fiddly but important job. Our sprayhood (which is now 13 years old) has been exposed to strong UV in the Tropics and we've already done a few running repairs but this was a chance to give it some proper TLC.

The sprayhood gets the Sailrite sewing machine treatment. The white strips on the floor are the backing paper from double-sided tape used to secure the binding before sewing. 

 We've added new binding to all the edges and also to the main seams so we hope it'll have a few more years of life left in it, particularly when we've given it a detail clean and a coat of magic conditioner and water-proofer called Renovo once it's back on Maunie.