A bike, a boat, a busy weekend.

This weekend I have had to crack on with getting the Mighty Heron ready for launch. Most of the Dunbar yachts will be craned in on Friday the 11th but I can't get that day off work due to Good Friday falling a week later. The Heron doesn't need a crane to launch as I built a trailer for it a couple of years ago. Amazingly, my welds are still holding.

After taking Fly out for a morning wander, I grabbed a coffee then jumped on the long haul trucker to nip to the shops then head down to the harbour to get started in a chill grey dawn. That's quality green antifoul this year. It was free as no-one else would paint it on their superstitious boats.  I'll take the risk!

First thing I had to get sorted was the electrics for the boat. When I bought the Heron seven years ago, there were no electrics at all; which is no bad thing on a wee boat. All I had was the atmospheric glow of a paraffin lamp and a small gas stove.  I sort of miss the simplicity, but times have changed, and like many others, I have the Navionics chart plotter app on my mobile phone. Also led technology has moved on leaps and bounds and cabin lights now only draw micro watts and can still provide a warm glow.

So out with the soldering iron, a lot of fiddly wee bits of wire and a lot of patience and I built a new switch board.

After much cursing I got every thing fitted and reconnected the battery. Amazingly it was still showing over 80% charge. The little solar panel seems to have worked well over the winter and kept things ticking along nicely. I'll take the battery off the boat and put it onto an intelligent charger this week.

Damp around the port lights has got to the burgees. If you own a wee boat, this is the sort of thing you get used to.

The new switch panel all painted shiny white with everything working. The wee Heron is getting all sophisticated this season.

Meanwhile, Stuart and Ross had got a lift over to Anstruther on Friday and sailed the Seline (Pegasus 700) back in a fast passage of less than three hours this morning. Unfortunately they didn't have a tender with them so guess who got a call to row out and provide the taxi ashore?

It was great to be on-board a boat again and it's good to see a yacht in the harbour. Hopefully the Heron will be joining the Seline next weekend.