At Last

So I finally got out today, no fog, no rain although no sun either but the crews' faces are glowing.

I had thought originally I’d be sailing on Sunday as skip thought it appeared to be the less windy of the two days and as it was a bit of a shakedown, he didn’t want to discover what was discovered in stronger winds.  The direction was North Westerly and at around 15.0 kts, so they thought they’d put a reef in until they’d settled down and at least cleared Gurnard.  Skip with a lack of practice managed to put in No.2 reef by mistake and whilst I was flatter I still managed around 8-9.0 kts SOG (the log skip left in wasn’t recording).  Halfway along the Western Solent the wind eased and they hoisted the whole main, this gave Skip the opportunity to re-tie the No. 2 reefing line and put it back on the same side of the sail as its pulley, taking out the twist they discovered when setting it.  No. 1 reefing line was correct no issues there.

Marley the wind generator was keeping my batteries up at 13.1v despite having the Autohelm holding course and we screamed along.

The crew opted to stop at Totland for lunch as this tested my windlass and those systems, besides skip bought a load of unpeeled prawns for £2 and the crew brought a partially baked half baguette and some salad, they found it warmer in the saloon than up top for sure.

The wind had dropped by the time they’d cleared up and fed the seagulls and so Thor Junior came out on deck.  The wind too had backed and was now North Easterly. So it would be on the nose again for the trip back.  The log was cleaned and Thor Junior was taken on deck and set up and hoisted. It took skip a couple of attempts to sort out the lines.  He had passed the lazy sheet around the furled jib but then thought that if he was to tack it would be an inner tack as opposed to an outer around the forestay tack as per the Gennaker.  He also managed to get the sheet inside the strop too.  Once sorted and having thought about this previously, he got his crew to go to set my Autohelm leaving her free to play the working sheet as he un-bagged the beast.  There were no hiccups, it un-bagged, although he did have to take the snuffer line around the working sheet to reverse a twist, which made it easier and off we went.  We climbed from 3.5 kts to 6.5kts.  In the end, we got headed and so, we opted to snuff the sail and ease the jib out, drop Thor Junior behind the jib and bag it.  We tacked out to clear Gurnard and tacked back in, we exceeded 9.0kts at this point too and watched another yacht being blown aground as we passed Gurnard, with the real RNLI in attendance.

Astonishing! Clearly, the log is not recording the correct speed, so we need to re-calibrate that at some point, but I think they understand what ticks my boxes.

God knows what I'll be like with a J3 flown in tandem with Thor Junior, probably rip the bow section from the stern!