April was not a particularly nice month weather-wise, plus bedroom 3 of Dagmar House was the attention of my crew for this year, and turned ankles and other distractions meant that progress was slow. On launch, the water that spat out of the exhaust readily on the hard stopped. With Skip's crew mate still nursing the ankle, he opted to take me up to my home berth on W pontoon on his own, as it's not that far from the Yacht Haven and with two cooling systems to the engine he was not too worried about overheating.
No issues and on his own he took me to my berth and sorted out my mooring lines.
Skip always has little ideas to make improvements year after year. He came up with the idea that to improve crew comfort whilst sailing and looking forward he would have simple devices fitted to the steering plinths so that it is possible to sit comfortably with your back supported, whilst facing forward. Without this device, your backbone rubbed against the hard surface making it uncomfortable. Skip being Skip, always wants to dual purposes out of something to make it worthwhile.
So here's the backrest come drinks holder:-
Backrest mode whilst sitting facing forward
Drink bottle mode whilst helming
So it wasn't till mid-May before I came out of the box for a shake-down and then again a couple of weeks later. On this occasion with the gradient wind only forecast at 10-13kts, but with the prospect that I was likely to reach 6.0kts of boat speed a reef was put in and a couple of rolls of jib held back. Sure enough, the apparent wind was on average 16kts gusting to 22kts at times, and we flew.
It's the end of May and the crew of Nimrod will arrive the last Friday for a RORC race which Skip will meet up with them. Then hopefully before May is out and the weather changes, we'll be off pushing the boundaries.
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