Portsoy to Wick

Yesterday, Malcolm Bremner, skipper of Isabella Fortuna, had said they were planning to leave for Wick in the afternoon, to wait for the swell to go down. Martin knows these waters better than anyone, so we planned to do the same. So, at 4am we watched White Wind preparing to leave for Peterhead on their way back to Anstruther. I wandered round to look at the swell and it didn’t look too bad, but it was still there, so we went back to bed.
 
Around 5:15 Alison looked out again and said “Isabella Fortuna is going!”
 
So, we threw clothes on and went up and got the engine on and I started undoing lines. I’d tied a long line between ladders. We’d used it to clip the jib halyard to so we would lean against the wall. So, I had that to undo as well as the long fore-and-aft lines.
 
The tide was falling fast now so we backed off the wall rather than going round in a circle up the beach! It all worked perfectly, and we motored out of the harbour following Isabella Fortuna.
 
Now we had to do all the work we wanted to do in harbour. We went very slowly. I helmed and Alison got the bow sprit out and then we swapped, and I bent on the No 2 jib. It took us a good hour to turn her into a sailing boat, including reefing her down part way to the first hoop. We could have had a little more mainsail out, but we were being careful.
 
Once Isabella Fortuna was over the horizon, we had no aiming point. Steering a course on plotter and compass is really hard for me. I can concentrate for hours on a technical problem but my attention span for hand-eye coordination is about one minute!
 
I managed. Badly.
 
At 8:50 the wind was working well for us, and we turned the engine off. By 9:20 the wind had freshened, and we wanted to reef a bit more. We turned on the engine and went head to wind, but we couldn’t get the next reef in.
 
We looked around and Alison spotted that the main sheet was wrapped around the boom. We tried to free it, but it turned out to be symptomatic of a bigger problem.
 
Robinetta’s roller reefing system is unique as far as I can tell. At the front of the boom is a drum around which a wire is wound. A block and tackle run back to the cockpit to wind the sail around the boom. At the back of the boom there is a companion fixed inner ring with a rotating outer ring around it. The topping lifts and main sheet are fixed to the rotating ring so when the boom rotates the sheet and topping lifts don’t. This rotating ring was stuck.
 
In April I’d made major repairs to the goose neck at the front of the boom, but I obviously hadn’t examined the back. The inner ring is held in place with three screws. If these screws come loose, they jam the outer ring. This must have happened.
 
In the swell, there was no safe way to fix this. In port it would be easy. We dropped the main and spent the rest of the day motoring with help from the jib and staysail. This was really frustrating as the wind was in the aft quarter – the best possible direction for sailing.
 
We’ve always had problems with ‘George’, the tiller pilot. For years the tiller fitting gave trouble. It was a stainless steel pin welded to a flat bar and the stresses are enormous and the weld gave and I tried various methods to keep in in place, all of which worked for a time… We spotted a friend had a threaded pin and buying one of those fixed that problem permanently. Then the main mount – designed for a different pilot – started breaking down from the stress and strain. After many repairs it is now in the bin, and I’ve ordered an expensive purpose made steel piece, but they are on very long lead times. I got the wiring wrong too. The wire gauge I’d used to the multi-way Bulgin socket was too thin, so the pilot kept falling out of steering mode and resetting. Finally, the Bulgin plug and socket were not mating well so actually getting a connection had become impossible. I’ve bypassed the multi-way socket and the thin wiring now. The new wiring directly connects the tiller pilot to the battery switch, using the same cable as the solar panel. Lashing the pilot against the bulwark worked well last time.
 
So, George went on helm duty. He did sterling work, giving Alison and me a relaxing trip.
 

Oil Production Platform

The (newish) windfarm

As we neared the Caithness shore the swell died down and apart from dodging the wind farm and a trawler, we had an uneventful passage into Wick where we were welcomed by the new harbour master and shown to a sheltered marina berth. 

Showers! 

Then we went looking for dinner. There wasn’t much open on a Monday evening. The bistro at the hotel was recommended but fully book so we went to the Weatherspoons for a steak.