Sailing, and breaking, boats.



My apologies for not posting at the weekend. The computer has been playing up and although I've got it running again, I'm using and old browser and have lost loads of settings.

But back to some lovely sunshine over the Easter Weekend. On good Friday Stuart gave me a hand and we soon had the mast up on the Heron. We celebrated with a barbecue on the yacht Seline. 

The diverter on the furler wasn't sitting straight but I wasn't too worried as I was sure it would slide into place once the foresail was bent on. I should have got on with sorting the sails and boom but cracking breeze got up in the afternoon and the Seline was ready, so we went sailing.

 



 

Out from the harbour and with three of us on board we quickly switched off the engine and sailed out between the rocks.

 



 

 

The sun was bright on the water and the easterly wind had us pushing the boat over on to her rails with a fastest recorded speed of 6.8 knots. If we had put a bit of effort into sail trim and a couple of tweaks on the rigging, I'm sure we could have gone faster.

 



But whats the point in trying to get the journey over as quickly as you can when you are enjoying it so much?

 

 

 

Whilst we were out we heard a Mayday call from just outside Dunbar harbour. We contacted the Coastguard to notify them that we were in the area (probably about four miles away) and were asked to proceed with best speed. It turned out that a visiting Anstruther motorboat had lost all power and was afraid of being washed onto the rocks. He had put out an anchor and was quickly towed to safety by the RNLI inshore boat. All the excitement was over by the time the Seline sailed back in.

 

On Sunday I finally got around to fitting the sails. Remember I mentioned the diverter that I thought would be ok? Well it wasn't and as I furled the sail there was a bang from the top of the mast and the halyard came tumbling down.

 

 

'Oh dear' I said, or something similar. Worse was to come, I climbed up onto the pier and took a picture of the top of the mast with the full extent of the zoom.

 

The forestay has twisted and there was no option but to undo all the weekend's work and take the mast down. I've ordered up a new forestay and a couple of lengths of new line, so hopefully I can get it all rebuilt next weekend. Despite all, it was still a great weekend.