First Sail!

Julian had a OU day school on Saturday, but luckily the place where it's held isn't too far, and it's on the way to Robinetta, so we headed to West Mersea on Saturday at tea time.

Bright blue skies, and a cooling breeze  made for a lovely evening, but a stiff  row out to Robinetta again. I ended up with blisters on my right hand, a first for me! Almost the first thing we did was move Robinetta down the Ray to the deepest vacant West Mersea Marine buoy. I'm almost sure it normally has a motor boat on it...

Julian spliced a new becket onto a second hand block we acquired at the OGA AGM last January. I had refurbished and re-varnished it earlier, and we intend to use it on the bowsprit tensioning rig, but the original becket was too long when we tried it. We'll fit it later. Then I rowed us back to the pontoon and we went to the Victory pub for dinner, before turning in for an early night.

We left Worm on the mooring at 0820 next morning and motored out to the Blackwater eating  breakfast on the way; I wanted plenty of water for our first raising of the sail in earnest. We avoided the Nass Beacon and its adjacent wreck by heading for Bradwell by the no4 channel marker.

The wind was blowing about force 4, and I decided we'd try the no2 jib first. It's not a bad balance for the main, but when the wind got up a little more the helm felt heavy. One roll of reef balanced the rig up again.

We beat out of the Blackwater with the tide beneath up, making about 5 knots. With one reef and the smaller jib we weren't exactly pushing her. Julian's not very well, feeling unfit after suffering from a feverish cold for two weeks that's left him with a debiliting cough, so I decided stopping for a lunch time rest was a good idea. The wind was going a little lighter, so we unrolled the reef, and headed for the Colne. By 1120 the wind was light enough that Julian thought trying the no1 jib made sense, so we headed away from the Colne again, while he changed sails. It took ten minutes, not bad for a first go under way, but not exactly race speed!

We sailed into the Pyefleet, and Julian tried picking up a buoy under sail. He nearly made it, but the tide was running a bit faster than expected, and he needed to use the engine a bit. We were on the buoy by 1210 for a nice long lunch time rest.

Having failed to sail onto the buoy Julian was determined to sail off, and did so perfectly at 1400. We beat out of the Colne against the tide and wind making 3-4 knots. Lovely job!

Very broad reaching, and some jib-staysail winging brought us back to the Nass by 1600, then we rolled the jib away and gybed to sail up the Thornfleet. Slackening off the peak tension slowed us down to 4 knots as we sailed through the moorings, but a wind lull at the start of the piles made me put the engine on to be safe. It went into neutral again almost immediately, and we sailed close hauled up to our buoy.

I missed it on my first attempt (I haven't practised picking up buoys under sail nearly as much as Julian), but got it on the second, almost I used a burst of engine reverse to stop us, which is definitely cheating!

While we were getting the sails away a motor boat came past, setting up a nasty wash that made Julian lose his balance. He fell against the club foot, and it broke; an unfortunate accident at the end of a really good day.  Bright blue sky, hot enough for shorts, and plenty of wind for sailing.