A disappointing 98 miles for the 24 hours and much of it not in the right direction, at noon. However a much, much pleasanter day overall, my fitting of Prop’s wind vane went according to plan and it is working well, the sun was out, we sailed OK, around 2-3 knots in 5-7 knots of breeze most of the day, it’s not rough but there’s still a swell of 2 ish metres which slops the sails around and slows us so we aren’t going nearly as fast as we would in the Kyles with the same wind speed. In the mid afternoon the wind died to around 5 knots and we struggled to keep going, I tried hand steering but it didn’t make much difference, I wondered about bearing off to the South to bring the wind more onto the beam / quarter and trying the assymetric but wasn’t convinced enough about it to try it and as it happened, by about 1700 the wind filled in and we started to pick up speed to 4+ knots, soon increasing to about a 10 knot wind from the North and we were up to 5-6 knots boat speed.
I had a pleasant afternoon enjoying the sun, changing underclothes, reading and pottering about.
Jobs still on the list include a different way of holding my PV panels, (which are attached to my top guard rails at the cockpit to convert sunshine into battery charging energy,) in the horizontal position. I had them set up using rods which were attached to the bottom so that I could swing them from the vertical position to the horizontal and hold them up with the rods stuck into the toe rail. That had been working fine but I lost one after I’d not noticed that a wave had caught the panel and knocked one Rod off the toe rail, it must subsequently have unscrewed and fallen off. Since then two have become fairly bent, presumably by the panel being knocked by a wave, I’ve straightened them but don’t think that the system is as good as I’d like. I also need to stow them earlier as the weather picks up because that appears to be when the damage is being caused, in the vertical position however they catch very little electricity.
Reading Daddy’s book, the Restless Wind, they are now in Rapa and I’m enjoying it all over again and more impressed with their seamanship and ‘can do’ attitude than I remember having been before.
Today is supposed to be a reasonably good day with winds from the North veering Westerly at supper time and I think I’ll head North at that stage to try to avoid the worst of a blow coming in tomorrow for the weekend.
Right the next forecast is due in in a couple of minutes so that’s all for now.
Thanks to every one for all their good wishes, I see a lot of messages on watts app, messenger, text and e mail that I didn’t have a chance to read and respond to around Sunday, sorry, they are all read and much appreciated.
Slainte
Jock
AJ Wanderlust has sent a couple of blogs - looks like they have also been a floating aviary. It looks like Hannah of Cowes has returned to Plymouth.