We're now Pagans!


Erbas has now been sold and we've moved onwards and upwards to a Westerly 33 ketch we've renamed "Pagan"

Come and visit our new blog at svpagan.blogspot.co.uk

Monday 28 April 2014

Training Weekend - Day 4 & Conclusions

The wind, a stiff easterly breeze in the evening, died down to leave us rocking gently and quite comfortably.

I, however, was not so comfortable and it took me ages to get to sleep (ongoing health problems which I won't go into). Having finally settled, I was then awoken by halyards tapping against the mast.

I wasn't keen on getting out of bed at half two in the morning but it was that or no sleep so up I got. I found that upon being asked to frap the halyards, the 2nd Mate had only frapped the burgee halyard (I later learned that as this was the only one tapping at the time he saw no need to do the others!)

I duly removed and stowed the main halyard on the trail and frapped the spinnaker halyard and pole topping lift and figured that should be me for the night.

It was not to be however as I now became aware of the main bilge pump going off every half an hour or so. Clearly, the cap on the log impeller housing wasn't tight enough and clearly it wasn't going to wait until morning.

Finally, to sleep!

The 2nd Mate redeemed himself by waking us at the surprising hour of nine with coffee made and ready on the table.

Jane made delicious scrambled egg for breakfast and then I set off on foot to fetch the car from the marina and find out which buoy we're on this year. Turned out nobody knows and Toby is off this week so I didn't quibble with the suggestion that we go back on the marina berth for now (even though it meant walking all the way back to the yacht station)

Starting the engine, we maneuvered neatly off the river pontoon and sidled into Stow Creek on the last of the flood tide. We made a proper job of entering the berth and tying up, the first maneuver that I'd been totally happy with all weekend.

Then it was simply a case of offloading gear, tidying up and shuting down before hitting the road for home.

As far as training goes, well to be honest we didn't do a lot. It was a bit too breezy for mucking about on Saturday, fatigue got in the way in Sunday and the need to get home fairly early today scuppered any plans we had for practicing!

On the other hand, some ropework jobs were progressed, we learnt more about Erbas and how to handle her and enjoyed ourselves so it certainly wasn't a wasted weekend

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