It's been months, but finally my main sail was returned to me last Saturday. A gang of four arrived, to lift, hoist, clip and re-attach the reefing lines.
It was a sunny day with the light wind coming from the north, the direction I was pointing, so no need to turn me round or loosen the main sheet. First, my skipper arrived in the dinghy with the sail bag dwarfing it and he soon man-handled it on to the pontoon and returned to pick up the others. With a strategy in place, I had one person on the electric main winch and two others on the pontoon lifting my huge sail over the safety rail. My skipper was standing on the boom and with one hand holding him to the mast; one bringing the sail to the cars; one feeding the grommets into the cars and the other releasing the car pins, withdrawing and replacing once the toggle lined up. With so many hands he'll be useful at buffets.
Slowly the main reached the top as each toggle was attached to the cars and raised for the next and my big white sail gleamed in the mid morning sunshine, the new sail numbers all present and correct and at the leech of each battern was a new tell tale, who's job it is to show how the air is flowing over the sail.
With both reefing lines re-tied and tested, it was lowered back into the repaired lazy Jack bag. Unfortunately my skipper spotted that both reefing lines, plus the clew were over the zip rather than under. With that in mind they all disappeared down river to Cowes for lunch.
The skipper returned a short while afterwards on his own and sorted the overlooked zip and re-tied the lines.
My bilge pump impeller was removed and found to have one of its fins broken, explaining immediately why it didn't want to suck any water from the hull. My skipper took it with him when he left.
Late on Sunday I was boarded once more and this time we set off on the ebbing tide and headed west once more. With a fickle wind unsure of where it wanted to come from the new main was kept in its bag and the jib was raised to pick up what wind there was. Just before sunset we anchored back in Totland and set the alarm.
With 21m of chain out and the alarm set to 20m the electronics waited till 0200 to warn of possible dragging. As it happen to coincide with high tide (0230), my skipper got up, let out more chain and reset the alarm for 30m before turning in to hopefully a more peaceful night. This is never normally the case under anchor as all the creak and groans that are inherent with anchoring, within the solitude of the vast emptiness. The wind had found itself again and started to howl through the rigging.
The previously forecast 3-4's had changed to 4-5's ocaissional 6 later so the thoughts of catching the last of the ebb around the Needles and heading back east and to the south of the island changed and the early start became more leisurely as it was felt now wasn't the time to discover there was an issue with the sail that had not been hoisted in anger. With one reef left in and picking up the flood tide I was lead home and back to my pontoon.
With the last of the flood tide making its way down the Medina, I was turned to head into it, as usual to help slow me down. However the strength of the wind and more importantly the effect it has on my high sides meant that I was taken past and turned round to approach from the other direction. With the anchor from the Kedge Poly Agatha ready to do more damage should the approach be wrong and the catamaran in front of me to slam into should I fail to slow down in time and over run. However with the timed use of reverse I hit the spot and was lashed to the pontoon amidships and the other warps could be sorted out at leisure.
Once lunch was complete, the bilge pump was reaquainted with its one way valve and tested, following the discovery of endless bubbles, the impeller was turned 180 degrees and I could have emptied the river beneath. The filter of the fresh water pump was also removed cleaned out and replaced after the sounds of the pump re-pressurising the system where heard far more regularly than usual. With the sail zipped up and all systems bar the auto bilge shut down, the crew left.
I notice that the electric motor from my auto pilot was on board and the fitting kit for the wind generator likewise, there's always something to do.
