Good Mood #4/22 The Shakedown Cruise

After more delays than the 8.42 from Bristol Temple Meads to Swansea, the boat finally had its shakedown cruise yesterday. There’s been a lot of jobs done over the winter (jobs included but were not limited to: having the sails taken off, sent away, cleaned and having the stitching inspected, having new running rigging, getting the engine serviced, having the boat hauled out, scrubbed down, antifouled, rewiring the electrics, etc, etc). The shakedown cruise is the opportunity to put as many components as possible under working stress, and see what needs additional attention.

There’s going to be a lot of detail here because I need to write this into the ships log the next time I’m up at Deganwy.

First of all, the weather and sea-state. The conditions yesterday were perfect for a good shakedown. The weather started overcast then became broken cloud with occasional blue skies. The air temperature didn’t rise above 12deg. The wind was never less than 8kts, mostly steady at 10-14kts, with occasional gusts of 20kts. The sea-state started out calm, but as the tide, current, and wind changed, the sea became quite rolly and switched from smooth to slight to moderate, with waves, at one point, reaching a swell of 1.25m.

We motored down the river into the bay where we hauled the mainsail and Arthur tut-tutted the way the reefing lines had been incorrectly attached. Riggers are renown for getting this kind of detail wrong (apparently). While I put the nose of the boat into the wind and steered a steady course, Arthur spent 20 minutes undoing and rerunning the reefing lines correctly. With this issue fixed we switched off the engine, hauled the mainsail, unfurled the genoa and used the strengthening wind to check how the boat handled in the conditions. On a beam reach and under full canvas we achieved a rapid 7kts at a 30° angle of heel, almost dipping the toerail into the water. It was like dinghy racing! I refined the angle against the wind from the beam down to 20° and even to just a few degrees off the nose where she still held a speed over the ground of 6kts. This boat is amazing! Later in 15kts of wind with one reef in, she held 7kts SOG and still felt very balanced. With two reefs in, in 18kts of wind, we were still making 5.5kts SOG.

As the weather was in our favour and we had the whole sea to play in (the only other surface traffic we saw was a tanker a good 10 miles away), we spent a couple of hours jibing, tacking, reefing up and down the scale.

This was all about Arthur drilling me in how to manage and alter the sail config in changing weather conditions, making sure I can keep out of trouble by myself in the open sea.

We also drilled the Crash Tack and Hove-To emergency method of stopping a boat under full sail in the middle of the ocean. It’s a neat method of bringing a boat to a full stop without actually lowering an anchor. It’s not a manoeuvre that’s taught at RYA Day Skipper level. Neither is how to sail and steer a boat that has lost its rudder. Yes, we drilled this RYA Ocean Yachtmaster exercise for about an hour as well.

When it was time to head home we sailed over to the Fairway cardinal buoy, lowered the mainsail, furled the genoa, switched on the engine and motored down the shipping channel into the river.

After about 10 minutes the engine overheat alarm came on. Bloody hell! I thrust the tiller at Arthur, leapt into the cabin, switched the engine off, got my emergency toolkit, and disconnected the cooling system input pipe. It flowed water. Reconnected it and disconnected the cooling system exit pipe. It flowed water. Reconnected it and restarted the engine which pumped water through and into the exhaust system as it should. Another air blockage? I need to try to find out how/why this is happening, this is the third time in about six months. However, Arthur was very impressed that I fixed this problem in less than 60 seconds. After this success, and with the sailing successes earlier in the day, Arthur asked if I’d like to get the handheld compass out and practice sightings and plot some courses. I politely declined. After a day of wins, I didn’t want to fall on my arse. I need to do more theory before these things become automatic.

We had to hang around outside the marina while waiting for the tidal gate to be opened, so I practised using the engine, at low revs, to keep the boat stationary while the tide/current is pushing against us. It’s relatively easy but you need to keep aware of everything in the water around you, as well as what the changing depth of water is doing beneath your keel.

Anyway, later than planned, we berthed on our pontoon, put the boat to bed and went to our respective homes.

Time on the water: 8 hours. Distance covered, 25.6nm.