Rope round the prop, and a galley "fire".

After spending Saturday socializing with members of the Clyde Cruising Club, the Clyde Corinthian Yacht Club, the Fairlie Yacht Club, and the Holy Loch Sailing Club. It was time to head home.

We had been safely tucked up on the inside of the visitor pontoon, with Worm out of the water beside us. Once Robinetta was prepared to leave, and the engine warmed up, we launched Worm beneath the bowsprit on a long painter. This usually works without any problems, but this time the wind caught Worm, and rather than falling neatly into place behind Robinetta she was blown around her bow, with the line running under Robinetta's keel.

Julian called to me to stop the engine, but I needed to keep the power on to complete the turn, and by the time I could throttle back Worm's painter was well and truly wrapped round the prop. The engine alarm went, and I quickly turned off the engine, and raised the staysail to give me steerage way. This worked a treat, and I could keep in the center of the fairway out of the marina.

Meanwhile Julian was leaning over the stern trying to free Worm's painter. This meant I could not move the tiller easily, which made steering difficult, but luckily I spotted an empty mooring buoy ahead that I could steer towards, and we decided to pick it up, then sort out the problem.

Once we were moored Julian got into Worm, and began working on clearing the prop. It took about half an hour to work the line free, but eventually we could turn the engine on, and begin to head home.

The wind was light but usable in Holy Loch, and we got the main sail up as soon as possible, and spent an enjoyable hour tacking slowly out into the Clyde. This was not entirely without incident. I put the kettle on to make a cup of soup, and after a couple of minutes I smelt burning. Some of Friday night's stew had spilled unnoticed onto the spirit canister, and as we were heeled and I had not deployed the gimbals, the burning spirit had found the debris and set it alight. No harm was done, but it was interesting to use our fire blanket for the first time!

Once in the Clyde the wind fell away to nothing, and we put the engine on. When the wind came back it was on the bow, and we spent a cold hour and a half heading up river under engine in some wind over tide chop. Turning into the Gairloch the sea state smoothed out, the wind was usable, and the engine went off for a lovely half hour's sail up to our mooring. We tried picking this up under sail, but did not quite manage it, so the engine went on again for a few minutes.

It had been a good weekend away for our first trip of the year, and despite the incidents on the return trip we had kept ourselves safe. It felt good to get back to sailing after the winter.

 

 

First Trip

Tomorrow is the Clyde Cruising Club rally at Holy Loch. It's also the first Saturday in the month, which means I want to be in Sandbank for the Cowal & Bute Gaelic group monthly get together.

We don't race, so it made sense to head over today.

Alison rowed us over to Robinetta about 11 am and we got everything sorted and left about 12:30.

There was just enough wind to sail at about a knot until we started drifting onto some of the Helensburgh Sailing Club moorings.

We got a little more wind past Kilcreggan.

But mostly we motored in calm water.

We met a couple of other boats and a kayak on the way, and exchanged greetings.

We also spotted Spirit of Callisto on her new mooring outside Rhu. A lovely modern gaff yawl out of Sean Macmillan's Spirit Yachts in Ipswich.

Fitting out afloat

Getting back afloat did not mean we were ready for the season. There were a number of things that still needed doing before we could sail, including re-leathering the gammon iron. This is the hoop at the bow that the bowsprit goes though. When we bought Robinetta it was covered in leatherette, which wore through quickly and needed replacing every season. Once we knew a bit more about the boat we splashed out on having it professionally covered with thick leather by Classic Marine. We then ignored it until last winter, apart from regular treatment with grease.

When we took the bowsprit off to revarnish it I saw that the wood was quite badly gouged where it went through the gammon iron, and a look at the leather showed that it had worn through on the edges. The leather needed replacing.

We tried asking round for a leather worker, but no one was interested in the job, so it was down to me to fix it.

Luckily our friend Brian from Sender II had some appropriate leather, which he cut to size and pierced holes in. Then it was down to me to fit it and sew it. It took a couple of tries to mould the leather round the metal and I will have to see how well the stitching lasts, but the gammon iron is now back in place in the bow, its leather well greased, and with the freshly varnished bowsprit ready for action.

We also bent on our new staysail. This feels very stiff and crackly. It is heavier gauge cloth than the old one, has a proper leach line, and even tell tails to show how the wind is flowing over it. I am looking forward to seeing how it sets. The new cover is also much smarter than my old home made one. I can only hope it lasts as long!

Launch Day

 Today was forecast to be much calmer than Monday when we had first booked our launch, although more wind was due in the evening.

Alison agreed with the yard that we would go in the water at 1 pm.

My Gaelic class finished at 10:30 and we got Worm on the roof of the car and went to the yard. Robinetta was already on the hoist but her cradle was still taking the weight so we couldn't antifoul the patches where the props were holding her. We went on board and rearranged the cover and did engine checks.

We took Worm down and left her on the slip.

The plan had been to put Robinetta onto one of the yard's moorings until ours was serviced but they serviced it this morning so we could go straight there. 

The chap from the yard lifted her on the hoist so Alison could complete the antifouling and then went to launch another boat.

Then it was our turn. Robinetta was moved to the slip and I got on board while Alison went out in Worm. Our friendly yard chap asked if Worm was named because a robin eat a worm. Hardly anyone makes that connection!

It was all going fine until I tried backing out of the hoist. We didn't move. There was no prop wash. 

I went down and looked at the gearbox. The control cable had sheared. At least we knew what the problem was. 

After some discussion, it was decided to launch and put her on the yard pontoon while they looked for a new cable. The chap got on board and manually worked the gears from the cabin. Having a wireless remote for the hoist is super useful!

Getting the cable replaced took hours. The throttle cable is easy. I've done it twice myself, once in Cardiff and once in Brittany. The gear cable is harder to change at both ends and in the most inaccessible place. The engineer was great. 

But it was gone 6 pm before we were on our way. The wind was getting up and the tide had mostly run out but was still ebbing. By the time we got near our buoy, we were being pushed south quite strongly.

Of course the pickup was streaming to the south of the buoy. There was very little room between Carraig an Ròin and the buoy. It got really shallow and I was glad Alison was up at the bow with the boat hook and couldn't see the depth gauge.

We picked it up fine. 

By the time we had the covers on the wind was blowing hard and there were 10-20 cm waves bouncing Worm around as we boarded.

Tying the last corner of the cover on Robinetta from Worm as she bounced around was really challenging.

Getting ashore was fine with wind and tide in our favour but low tide meant a long trip across the mussel bed and beach with Worm. I went up to the house and got the trolley and Eleanor came to help.

Robinetta is now safe on her mooring.

Getting ready to go back in the water

The last three months have been pretty wet in Rosneath, making it a pretty typical west coast of Scotland winter. Julian ordered and fitted two replacement oil pipes, and we mopped out the bilges thoroughly, but that was pretty much all we could do until the weather changed. 

Last week we finally got the dry spell we needed for outside work, and I managed to prepare the underwater areas for antifouling, and give Robinetta a complete coat of Lauderdale Blue paint. I also arranged for an engine service (changing the filters e.t.c.). The engineer said he could do this today, although he had not appeared by 16:00 when the rain started and I put the covers on.

With the engine nominally ready to go I asked for a launch slot. It seems that this early in the season there is no need to worry about being in a queue, and my preferred date of 30th March was immediately agreed. I then went back to Robinetta and anti-fouled her with Alex's help before the rain began.

We should be back in the water in a week, relaunching within the 3 months ashore we paid for. Our mooring has not been serviced yet, but the yard offered us the use of one of their own moorings until they could service ours. Now I need to transfer my attention to getting Worm back into commission. She has spent the winter in the garage, and should be ready once the hull has been primed and anti-fouled.

Time for a new book

The last time I pulled the blog posts together and created a book was for our 2021-2 seasons, about bringing Robinetta round Cape Wrath to her new home in the Firth of Clyde. "Round Cape Wrath" is still available to purchase in paperback or electronic form, like all our books, but I thought it was time  to create a 9th book, about Robinetta's exploits from her Scottish home.

The electronic version of "On the Whale Road" is now available for pre-order for £4.99, with the release date being the end of February. The print version will also be available from Amazon on that date, but rather more expensive at £19.99. Unfortunately the cost of printing continues to increase and as the Robinetta books are print on demand I hold very little stock and price increases are inevitable.

Significant work goes into creating these books, which I hope adds value to the record in this blog. They should also contain no spelling mistakes, far fewer grammatical errors and have a more consistent style. They also contain maps to let you see our routes.

 Please have a look at the books, and if you decide to buy, then please leave a review.

End of year totals 2025

 Robinetta was hauled out on 19th December with very little planning, (see previous posts), so it is now time to publish her end of year totals.

This was a long season, beginning in April and not ending until September. In that time she traveled 1421 nautical miles in 420 hours. Only 113 hours of this was under sail alone, with the ratio lower than normal due to our being very conservative in our sailing during the 6 or so weeks that I needed to be careful of my broken elbow. The engine was on for 310 hours.