Today my crew turned up and took me out to stretch my legs.
My GPS repeater that sits at the end of the table in the cockpit, was returned and wired back in. With the sun shining but 5-8knots of variable winds I was taken out in to the Solent once again and headed West with the ebbing tide.
According to my crew the forecast was for Northerly backing Westerly winds, however the Solent as always did its own thing and South Westerly's crept in more often than expected. The last third in fact saw me sail due South in order to keep moving with a modicum of speed. I was happy to show my crew that the speed encountered previously wasn't an ill calibrated instrument and within an hour and a half we were up by Hurst Castle and turned to head back. Rather than Goose wing on a dead run, which a number of smaller yachts were doing, my skipper not a great fan of this angle of sail, he kept the jib filled and gybed back and forth back to Cowes. In fact he maintained a reasonable speed of 5.0 - 6.0 knots of boat speed as the tide turned increasing SOG (Speed over the Ground) as defined by satellites.
The wind had been fickle all day, Northerly , Westerly and South Westerly never exceeding 10.0 knots, yet I clocked up 8.0 knots at one point.
My Marlec wind generator is still not working and the bolts that hold it all together are proving a little awkward to loosen off, Skip has the bearings to replace but without getting the unit off he'll struggle to fix it. The solenoid for the winch, hasn't been freed yet either, assume that'll come shortly.
Assume these things will be tackled shortly.
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