December Weekend 2013 - Day 1

After picking up the workers from the big shed, I loaded up the car and headed over to his abode to load up the bosun.

We had a decent drive down in the lighter Saturday morning traffic and arrived to a sunny, quiet and bitterly cold welcome at the marina.

With the kettle in regular use all day we set about reorganising the packing of the new inflatable dinghy and the contents of the port cockpit locker so that the one would go into the other. It didn't look good at first and nor did the plan B option of stowing the dinghy down the quarter berth. However, with the floor slats removed I found we could roll the dinghy up into a narrower package which would fit in the locker. Result!

As expected though getting the dinghy in was at the expense of taking the liferaft out. There's really nowhere else to stow the valise liferaft other than on deck and it's several years overdue for a service in any case. I'll take it home and shed it for now pending a decision on what to do about it - probably the best option long term being to change it out for a canister version and find somewhere on deck to mount it.

Having worked out how to put the dinghy away, we now got it out again and set about a trial inflation in the cockpit. It can be done without too much difficulty although I found, for the first time but not the last today, that I was struggling physically by the time I'd got it pulled up with the stirrup pump.

With it blown up there was only one thing to do - go play with it! Attaching the outboard was a doddle, I'd already put fresh petroil in the tank and I was soon zooming up and down the creek on a solo test flight.

Glen then clambered aboard for a two up test which went equally well although with two fat gits on board a third person would have to be a midget! Feeling very pleased with my purchase, we tied up and had a coffee and some lunch before I made a third run to practice approaching the stern to board.

Then we hauled the dinghy out off the water and inverted it on the foredeck to dry out a bit. I'd hoped it might stow there inflated for short runs and pottering about but whilst it will squeeze between the mast, stays and pulpit rail, just, it leaves no space spare at all making access to mooring lines, anchor, etc impossible.

After some idling below decks, and figuring it wasn't going to get any drier before dark anyway, I deflated and re-packed the dinghy on the foredeck (which worked better than doing it in the cockpit) and stowed it away.

Glen did take some photos but they're on his digital camera so will have to wait until we get home.

After a bit of a breather, we headed for the pub, a meal and some beer. It wasn't a late night though especially as I was still struggling for energy and any sort of effort was leaving me out of breath and out of sorts. Ok, I'm not the fittest of people but this was ridiculous!

Hopefully an early night would sort me out assuming sleep was forthcoming. That was by no means certain as it was a fairly wild night with winds gusting over 40 knots and much squeaking of fenders and groaning of mooring lines.

Never the less, within minutes of climbing into the v-berth and once the initial shivering had stopped I was away with the fairies!