Practice!

Yesterday’s sailing practice largely concentrated on casting off single-handed and mooring single-handed.

In a bonkers development, the North Wales coast served up another day of light-to-almost-no winds, which was both good and not good.

Good, because it meant everything had a lot of control and no interference from outside factors. Bad for exactly the same reasons, because that’s not how the North Wales coast is usually. Outside factors (strong tides, massive currents, and fierce winds) are usually what the Conwy serves up.

But we just carried on with our practice itinerary anyway.

Casting off solo meant changing the mooring lines to a spring which I could unhitch by myself whilst helming the boat astern. Sounds simple, right?

After a couple of successful attempts we left the marina, motored up the Conwy and I hoisted the sails (unfurled the Genoa then hoisted the main).

We sailed out to Great Orme and enjoyed a couple of cups of tea along the way.

When it was time, we turned about and sailed back down into the Conwy. I took in the main and furled the Genoa and then motored into the marina where I had five rehearsals at mooring a 32′ yacht on a finger pontoon single-handed whilst helming.

Frankly the fifth attempt was perfect so we called it a day because you can’t improve on perfect. NB, the secret to getting this single-handed manoeuvre right is to sail really slowly (which is going to be difficult when the weather is not playing nicely).

There are a couple of niggles on the boat that I’m gradually sorting out:

• I’ve sent the autohelm/tiller pilot away to be serviced, when we attempted to use it last time it developed a mind of its own
• The mask gate on the mast is jamming when I try to raise the mainsail. It’s free-able with some manual intervention, but it means leaving the cockpit to do it and ideally one doesn’t want to leave the cockpit to fanny about with the sails (technical term there) when one is sailing solo
• She needs some reefing hooks and a new starboard flag halyard, and finally…

There’s a freshwater leak (rain!) getting in from (I suspect) one of the cockpit lockers. The water is getting down into the engine bay bilge and has proved to be a bugger to remove. There’s not much room to get a big hand (and I do have big hands) clutching an even bigger sponge into the engine bay bilge, what with the engine bay largely being occupied by, you know, an engine and cables and pipes and various other engine-related bits and bobs. The bilge pump doesn’t make much impact on this water because its inlet (sucky-upy) pipe is in the wrong place for this gathered rainwater.

So I cobbled together a garden ornament water pump with my cordless drill as a power source, and a couple of flexible bits of hosepipe and tried that out yesterday. Success! The cordless bilge pump device removed half a bucketful of water and left the engine bay bilge dry and clean and shiny.

I’m tracking down the source of the rainwater leak, and I should have that located and fixed fairly soon.