Back in the water

Robinetta was craned into the West Mersea Marine wet-dock around 1630 and we launched our new dinghy Worm over the seaward side and then walked her into the dock to tie on behind. The first great bit of news was that Worm did not leak!

We left the dock as quickly as we could, at 1645, and got ready to sail while under way. It's not the best way to do things since the sail cover is difficult to take off when the topping lifts are on! Worm towed beautifully, and we were sailing along Mersea flats by 1730. It was high water so we did not worry about depth despite not having a working depth gauge, just used the GPS charts to be sure of where we were. There was a nice steady force 4 blowing, but the weather was overcast and cold.

Quite a bit of water was coming in through the bows when I checked, and I realised I had not turned the automatic bilge pump on after Robinetta was put back in the water. When I did she started pumping immediately. Not the best sign after only being out of the water for five days!

We were taking the sails down for entry into Brightlingsea harbour by 1850, and had just finished when a large wake from a motor boat made the boom swing wildly. I had restored the ensign mount to its place on the rudder while Robinetta was ashore, and put it on the wrong way round, so that the ensign pole stood straight up, rather than raked backwards. The boom still cleared the head of the pole, but the top sail yard didn't. The flag ended up in the water leaving part of the flag pole in the mount. We fished the flag out of the water after more goes than we should have needed (my fault, as I failed to reach it three times when I was helming, while Julian got straight to it when he took over!)

Brightlingsea harbour master had gone home by the time we tried calling him up for a berth, so we rafted up alongside Quintet, on the first pontoon we came to, then got the water taxi ashore to collect our race numbers for the following day.