2021 Part 2

It's not been the year I thought it might, skipper still busy with work and the weather has been fantastic then awful.

This year the Round the Island Race at least ran, not that I went out in it, but we had Nimrod and friends come to stay on the pontoon as usual and even a newer 470 'Junik' came to raft next to me, they were off at 0530, which is probably why Skip and crew didn't want to enter!

We had previously done the race in reverse a few months ago and not in one go, we left Cowes to head to Bembridge and met the building winds around the headland, but with a reef in the main and the fact that the furler wouldn't let out all of the jib earlier, we had a cobweb removing beat to windward to get round and head into Sandown Bay, where we stayed for the night.  This happened to be the same night that their friends on board Nimrod were out on the RORC race Myth of Malhem and so they watched them come round and wished them good luck on the radio and left them to disappear into the night.

The following day we had a cracking sail around St Cats leaving my systems to helm the boat whilst the crew was able to wander around and enjoy the scenery.  Although approaching Freshwater Bay the autohelm did let go again, but we're not sure if it was accidentally disengaged as the touch-sensitive plotter may have been inadvertently leaned on.  However, once recovered we approached the Needles and cut in from the buoy marking the end of the shallows, the sea was rolly, Skipper holding the mainsheet and calling the shots, as a gybe was called for once on the other side, whilst his crew had me surfing down the waves.  Two of us (boats) took the shortcut, exhilarating and worrying at the same time, but we rounded as planned and pulled into Totland once again.

On Sunday the wind had left us but that didn't stop the skipper from trying the Code 0 and using the autohelm to tack whilst crew pulled in the sheet and Skipper spun the furler.  It worked a couple of times but the wind died and I didn't have enough speed to complete a turn, meaning that the Code 0 backed and when a puff did come filled from the wrong side.  All furled up on went the donk and headed home.

The developing problem of the furler eventually had Skippers' mind going, eventually biting the bullet and opting to replace it.  The system is a French one, Facnor, and their mindset is for low to no maintenance, maybe the occasional wash with fresh water of both top and bottom furlers and that it.  It's made that way stainless steel ball-bearings packed with grease in a stainless steel case and a weatherproof seal.  However, it had been getting stiff to wind in, and certainly, you'd expect the wind would easily unfurl it given the chance!  And it may have been the storm that trashed the original jib a few years ago that did the damage as that had no problem in getting all the sail out!

However, the first task was to take the furlers and aluminum foil down to ground (or pontoon) level.  This means that the forestay has to be eased to enable the large bolt at the tip of my bow to be withdrawn and Skipper wanted to do that without any tension at all.  Probably, as he was working some 4feet above the water and any loss over the side meant another item donated to the depths of the River Medina!  Also, if it was easy to slide out then it should be as easy to put back.

He (Skipper) wandered around my decks for a while looking at how the loads worked together to keep my mast slightly bent biased to the rear with the fractional rig I have and what would be required to undo and bring it down, without bringing the whole of the rigging crashing to the deck.  First things first, was to undo and remove the backstay, this is a 19wire 'rope' that can be tensioned to pull the top of the mast backward, hence its name this, in turn, invokes a bend in the mast and creates a sag in the mainsail, losing some of the sails power, so useful in strong winds and to provide a balance between the sails meaning the rudder remains dead center.  Any deviation from dead center produces friction and as we all know friction slows things down.  In its place, he used both the topping lift (used to raise or support the boom) and the main sheet and lead these to my stern quarters, creating 'flying' backstays so to speak.

It was then up to the French to send a replacement to the main dealer in Plymouth and so the wait started!