Sunday 29 May 2011

Ready For New Adventures

The spreader bracket is now fixed. I even managed to do it alone and with the mast up, by using a ladder and securing myself with harness and a rope around the mast.
Bruce The Anchor has a new warp, and the boat lift is booked for Wednesday. This weekend is a long weekend and the weather forecast is brilliant. What else can we wish for?
Mekicevica is going out of the lock and into tidal waters.
Luis

Sunday 22 May 2011

Shroud Mystery

Mekicevica still on the hard, and no sailing this weekend.
Plenty of maintenance jobs to do, though. Spiky The Tabernacle got painted, because the sea was leaving its mark on the aluminium. I also had to repair the spreader bracket. This is one thing that has been giving me grief since day one. When we bought Mekicevica (than Emily) the spreader bracket was broken and I could not find an exact match. A bit of fiddling with rivets got a Selden bracket to sort of fit, but in the recent blowy conditions the rivets came loose. A radical problem requires radical solutions, so screws thought he mast it was. They may cause a problem with the internal halyards, but I am replacing them by external ones, anyway. The internal ones are now dedicated to the courtesy flag and radar reflector.
Fixed this way the spreaders look like they will take any wind. The angle changed a bit, but so what (I thought). We got the mast up again today, which was easy with the new tabernacle (Spiky in his new coat). I made the long shrouds really tight, and the re-jigged spreaders provided for a nice mast rake... THE WRONG WAY! Yes, that is right, the mast bent forward, rather than back. It seems we have to get the mast down again and correct the angle of the spreaders.
Sailing boats are really complicated... and beautifully so.
Luis

Saturday 14 May 2011

Alone at Sea (for 5 mins) and Trailer Troubles

Every superhero has a sidekick and Mekicevica is no exception. Her sidekick is Trevis The Trailer. After the latest troubles with getting Mekicevica out of the water, Trevis is not very popular. To be fair, it was not entirely his fault. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the slip we use is a death-trap.
Mekicevica and her sidekick. That is Trevis The Trailer under her, not the fool on top.
Let me start the story from the beginning:
Friday the 13th of May started really well. I had the day off and drove to Bruinisse to vacate the visitors berth at the Watersports Club, where Mekicevica had been since the previous weekend. My skills at maneuvering single-handed are getting better, and I made it out of the harbour without incidents. In the moment I came out into open water, I realized that for the first time I was taking Mekicevica out on my own. OK, I was motoring, and the "journey" was one third of a mile long, to the yacht harbour. A solo, semi-circumnavigation of channel marker G2. Holding the tiller, alone in the crisp-clear morning air, only one other boat around, it was enough to make me wish for some real solo sailing. After I finish a few more tweaks in the rigging, and try a tiller-tamer of my own invention, I will go for it.
The rest of the day was spent at the yacht harbour, busy with small chores and preparing Mekicevica and Trevis for the recovery operation when Sandra joined me in the evening.
Enough suspense: We did get the job done. But it took nearly four hours, and the spontaneous, kind help of a guy who seemed to know all the tricks in the trailering book. Even then, we ruined the clutch of the car. We are not amused and not willing to repeat the experience so soon. At least not at that slip. In a couple of weeks Mekicevica will return to the water, but this time it will be with the boat lift.
The trouble with a slip that is too steep: you either have the nose on the trailer, but the boat floating above the trailer (left) or you leave the trailer less deep (right) but then it takes Superman (or a trailer winch) to pull the nose on .

Monday 9 May 2011

Grevelingen Round Tour - Part 2: Gusty winds (but reefed sails)

The Scharendijke yacht harbour is smaller and less luxurious than the one in Bruinisse. (Cheaper too.) But the harbour master and the people in the club house were very pleasant. The dinner almost changed my negative opinion about the Dutch food.
The damage to Mekicevica was not as bad as it had appeared and was soon repaired. In fact it would have been avoided if a) I had made the nuts on the bottle screws of the shrouds tighter and b) had assembled the goose-neck properly. Such is cruising in a small boat, you learn sailing and boat-maintenance simultaneously, as you go along...
The weather forecast for Sunday was that the moderate to fresh breeze would ease and veer West. The timing of the change varied, depending on the source of the forecast. So we decided to have a slow start, hoping that the change would come in time to allow us to sail downwind back to Bruinisse. Unfortunately, First-Mate had to be at work Monday early, so eventually we decided to move on, even if it meant beating all the way back.
This time we put a reef in the main before leaving, although I think I did not get it quite right and the boom looked a bit odd. I realized what I did wrong during the trip. Anyway, it did not look very seamanlike, but it worked. The return trip was much more relaxed, even beating against a gusty wind. One minute I would be thinking of shaking-off the reef, the next minute I would be hurriedly easing the main-sheet with Mekicevica on her ear!
Sailing on the Grevelingenmeer you come across some wonderfully-looking boats.
We arrived back to Bruinisse around 4pm, but this time we headed not for the expensive yacht harbour, but for the harbour of the watersports club. We were welcome by a very friendly harbour master. He even came out of his office and on to the pontoon to greet us.
Oh yes, and the wind did veer to West, just as we were tidying-up.
Mekicevica will stay here until Friday, when I plan to take her out of the water to go for a new round of improvements.
On my desk is now the book with the tide tables and the stream atlas. We are ready to venture out of the lock and into tidal waters.

Sunday 8 May 2011

Grevelingen Round Tour - Part 1: Mekicevica in a blow and nearly dismasted

The Grevelingenmeer is a former estuary, now separated from the North Sea by a dike (Brouwersdam). The result is a huge salt water lake, rich in wild life. You can read more about this example of "engineering with respect for nature" in this site: http://www.grevelingen.nl/content.asp?menu=1&page=337&lang=0. Bruinisse, Mekicevica's first home in the waters of Continental Europe, is on the East side of this lake.
We have previously rented day boats here and had thoughts of a two-day round trip of the Grevelingenmeer. So, it was an obvious choice for Mekicevica's first real trip.
We left home on Friday and drove the (by now very familiar) 106km to Bruinisse Yacht Harbour. After a light dinner aboard, a few more tweaks of the rigging and electrical system, and a good night sleep we woke up feeling ready for the trip. A short visit to the chandlery resulted in a new addition to the equipment: Fat Bob, a big round fender. Fat Bob now lives in the starboard lazarette, keeping company to Bender The Big Fender. This profusion of fenders says a lot about my trust in my own ability to manouver.
Breakfast aboard.
The day was sunny, and the wind a SE gentle breeze, forecast to freshen-up during the day (and it sure did, read on). So the fist part of the trip out was plain sailing on a broad reach making close to 5kn. Life was good!
Our goal was to get to Scharendijke for the night. It soon became clear, that with such good progress we would be there for lunch. So we decided to extend the tour by going around one of the islands (Hompelvoet), even if that would mean some beating against the wind later to reach our destination.
The extended route from Bruinisse to Scharendijke.
As forecast, the wind was now picking-up. As I looked ahead to our route I could see some yachts heeling seriously and I started thinking of reefing for the up-wind bit. Do you know the saying "if you are thinking of reefing, you probably should already have done it"? And do you know the typical attitude of the inexperienced skipper: "Ah, it's too much hassle; we'll be alright"? That is exactly what I said.
Let me tell you: I don't believe that in her previous home in the Norfolk Broads Mekicevica was ever pushed so hard. But she did wonderfully. Eventually, my fear overcome the desire to avoid the trouble of reefing, so we put a few rolls in the genoa. This in itself, was quite a mission as the roller reefing started playing up again, and Sandra had to go forward to disentangle the reefing line. Moreover, the pressure of the wind on the genoa was such that it took several goes of turning into the wind, pulling in a bit of the genoa, being blown off the wind, and starting again. Moreover, I had not even checked properly how to reef the main, so it had to stay fully up.
By now most of the big yachts around had dropped sails and were motoring, especially in a narrow, up-wind passage. But Mekicevica bravely beat up this channel, in hot pursuit of a big yacht called Freya. Unfortunately we don't have any pictures of this part of the trip because the camera panicked and refused to work.
Eventually the route to Scharendijke turned to a beam-reach and my heart-rate dropped below 200 bpm.
After a while Sandra asks:
- Hey, is it normal that the leeward shrouds are so slack?
My expert answer:
- Uhhh, I s'pose so.
Sandra again:
- Wait a minute, one of them is not slack, it is completely loose.
Luckily by then we were in front of Scharendijke harbour and it was time to douse the sails. This did little to calm Sandra's fear that the mast was going to drop on our heads before we arrived. It did not help the situation that the boom came off the goose-neck as we lowered the main.
Mekicevica made a triumphal entrance into Scharendijke harbour looking a bit battered, with shrouds blowing in the wind and boom hanging from the toping lift. Down below was also a bit of a mess. I once saw a video of cruising in the Caribbean where they had this net with fruits hanging in the cabin. I though that was a good idea and copied it for this trip. The violent beating and the fruits made the cabin look like the inside of a food processor after you have made a smoothie.