Tuesday 19 October 2021

An Autumn check up

Julian and I drove down to check on Robinetta on Saturday. The Yard had taken off the cockpit cover to see what needed doing, but not started any work. They had not put the cover back either, which together with the fact that they has isolated the batteries thereby disabling the automatic bilge pump meant that when I stepped down into the cabin I trod on floating floorboards. Not a good start! Luckily the water had only just reached the level of the floor boards, and the cabin was not nearly as damp as when a similar situation happened at Holyhead.

Initially I thought that the float switch had failed to work and tried to use the automatic pump. When that did not work I went for the manual cockpit bilge pump, but luckily for my arm muscles Julian thought to check the isolation switch and the electric pump was soon working away. The water was well below the level at which it would damage anything, but I am glad we went to see Robinetta when we did.

After a night on board we woke to an amazing morning mist with the sun coming through it.


We tied Worm, the tender, to the car roof, and took her home. We also took the broken gaff with us, to remove the fittings for re-use after Julian builds the new spar.