Summer Weekend Day 2

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What a frustrating day!

All the way downriver we had the wind pretty much on the nose. For short spells we got some life out of the sails but never for long

We were passed by a long procession of motor boats in the outer reaches of the river. Must have been a dozen or more in line astern. The motor boat crowd often get a bad press from us raggies (as they fondly refer to sailors) so just for the record the whole fleet were impeccably well mannered, left as wide a berth as practically possible to other vessels and created no more wash than necessary

As we cleared Holliwell Point, I cut across the sands close in to get on the wind at last and we were able to shut off the engine.

Not for long though. The wind suddenly shifted from Nor'easterly into the North heading us and forcing a tack to avoid going inside the old range beacons on the Ray Sand.

It also took the opportunity to cut up uncomfortably choppy and with our lack of boat speed, which I'll come to in a minute, we were getting all but stopped dead at times.

Enough, frankly, was quite enough of that and it was back on with the engine and motor round into Bradwell Marina

That lack of boat speed thing. I felt we'd lost the edge off her performance under both sail and motor on the Norfolk trip. Today it was clear the problem had become a lot worse.

Under power she's gutless. Even at full chat, which used to pull the cockpit drain and water and give well over six knots of boat speed, she now behaves like a bored teenager

Under sail, she just doesn't want to settle down. Try add I might I could not get her into any sort of groove.

Matters were not helped by the lack of luff tension on the main. Grind as I might, the head of the sail was up as far as the black band on the mast and stubbornly refused to go an inch further. The solution to that problem was simple - drop the boom gooseneck a couple of inches lower on the mast (right to where there's a taped band marking the mast. Odd that. Odder too that we didn't have, or perhaps didn't notice, this problem before)

However, the real problem is the explosion of weed growth on the hull in the three weeks since we got back from Norfolk. I suspected the bottom was foul, now it's a clearly visible fact

The weed is almost certainly accompanied by a nasty case of the barnacles, particularly on the prop

Happily, I've already booked a lift and pressure wash for next week and a weekend ashore to refresh the antifouling
On another note, I mentioned we were down -65A/H on arrival yesterday. We plugged in overnight but only recovered half of the charge by this morning. The monitor was still indicating -36A/H but the mains charger was putting a paltry 0.7A into the domestic battery bank (and nothing at all into the engine battery)

On the have of it, that would suggest the batteries were close to being fully charged. However, by the time we got to Bradwell, the engine alternator had fully charged the batteries and the monitor was reading 0A/H

That now suggests a problem with the Sterling mains charger. That I could do without

Oh and the autopilot has gone doolally too. George is going to have to be given a severe talking to (also known as a factory reset) cos he's over steering and too slow to respond. Somehow the settings seem to have got messed up

Anyway, upon arrival in Bradwell we berthed alongside Apogee and meet up with Ian and Jo. I tested out the new addition to our fleet which Ian had brought over for our perusal. It's a small Avon RIB which will be an immeasurably superior tender for use on the moorings and consigns the evil GRP dinghy to garden ornament status

After that, beer flowed, wine was partaken, an excellent meal was eaten in the clubhouse and much talk of sailing ensued. Twas a lovely evening in great company and we both throughly enjoyed ourselves.

Then we went to sleep!