First outings

On Saturday the 14th, I went to watch France England rugby at the pub at the marina. There I me Richard and Mike. We got talking and both Mike and Richard generously offered to go out with me the following day to test the boat out. The following day, Mike had to bail, as the electrician, that he had been trying to get hold of got in touch with him that day and was ready to start working on Mike's boat (Emerald Lady), so I went out with Richard.

Richard kindly spent the whole morning with me practicing, docking side to stern to etc and then we went out for a motor - we were unable to sail as I was still waiting on the zip for my lazy bag. After about 2 hours of my ham fisted docking and a 1 hr motor, we returned. I was reversing into the slip, at about 1m to go, when I recognised that I would not make the berth, so I applied power and the boat accelerated onto the dock, I eased off the power and the boat remained pinned to the dock. Richard came running over to help (as he had been patiently giving advice and fending the boat), he shut the motor down as we could climb on the dock and we walked the boat. At first we speculated that the prop had somehow become stuck in reverse, but that didn't make sense. I went down below and noticed that there was a nut on the floor and the remainder of the clip to hold the forward/aft cable in the power quadrant.. It was *EXTREMELY* fortunate that it broke, when it did as other people's boats make really lousy and expensive fenders and the channel in the marina would also make a pretty lousy fender... Damage to the boat minimal all things considered..

Damage to the boat

Power quadrant

I showed this to a number of people who agreed that this was a pretty cheap piece of rubbish to put on a boat, as this was an accident waiting to happen..

Repaired boat booboo.

One of my first attempts at boat repair..

The breaking of the power quadrant caused me some concern as the Dufour dealers were pretty slow at getting prices and pretty generous on the asking of them and Ryan was scheduled to arrive on the 28th of March and I was not confident that Dufour would be able to get me the part in such a short notice. I told Vince what had happened and he suggested I just get the Volvo one, since the motor and the sail drive were both Volvo bits..  I took his advice, placed the order and the part arrived 3 days later..

As I was waiting for the zip for my lazybag, I was running out of finding things to do so I took a break and inflated the dinghy and took it for a spin..  Yet another quick 5 minute boat job - BTW, next time anyone says something like that feel free to call a *HUGE* BS on that.... In boating there are *NO* 5 minute jobs - full stop!

Long story short, it took a couple of hours, the fuel tank was 1/2 full 1/4 petrol, 1/4 water, the carb likewise.. I did get it going and I decided to take the beast out for a spin.. It is a 2m slatted floor dinghy, with a 3.5hp motor - *REAL* performance gear...  I did manage to get it to plane, but I had to sit waaaaaaaaaaaaay up front and in the middle any other position would result in  a circular motion..  I also shut down the motor and decided to row for a bit, but for the life of me  I couldn't get it to travel in a straight line, I would always turn to the right - my logic was that I was right handed and hence the uneven stroke, so after that mental note, I did make some progress, but still there was a huge bias for circular motion....

As I was stowing the dinghy, I put the paddles together and the source of the problem was pretty obvious...

Whacky oars..

The oars were different lengths... WTF... So I cut them both to the *SAME* length....

In the mean time, a bunch of other bits I had ordered arrived, LED navigation lights, TV etc. I also decided to take a look at the solar panel as it had only provided charge once - which was odd..  At this time, my AIS transceiver had arrived so I took the boat apart again, to trace the solar panel wire and install my AIS transponder..

The solar panel installation was a real *GEM*. A piece of cable was run from the companion way (with a joint) to the mast (another joint), back to the instrument panel (with another joint), back to the transom of the boat (with yet another joint) and back to the port cabin to the charger... At each junction, the cable diameter got thinner... So I ripped it out and ran a shorter cable, with the largest diameter I could get back to the controller.. The solar panel did produce some power,but was not awfully good at it.. Mike had told me about a solar panel he had bought, a 150W panel for 200 pounds delivered, I added this to the list of potential upgrades...

I fitted the AIS and I could see vessels only up to 5NM away, which was odd, as Richard had told me that you had to disable AIS alarms during the day in the gulf as the number of ships were so many that you would be dealing with alarms instead of navigating..

I was running out of time as Ryan would be arriving soon and I was sill waiting on batten cars and my automatic bilge pump controller, power quadrant and a windlass remote plug and socket.. 

So far I had learnt a few things :

1) knives are sharp

2) don't try to cut a baguette while holding it (learn't with point 1)

3) things will happen, at their own pace, follow up emails and calls might make you feel better but will accomplish very little...

Two day's prior to Ryan's arrival, the remainder of my goodies arrived (except the batten cars). On Friday, I decided to check the radio - I was not receiving any calls on my main VHF radio, even though I was able to receive on my hand held. I took a look and I could see nothing obvious, so I went to the chandlery and asked them to take a look, the told me that 90% of the time it was just loose or bad connections on the radios. They were busy, but would be able to come and take a look on the Monday. I went back to t the boat and took a look.. Close the mast there was a junction - I took that apart and noticed that the conductor was just resting against the plug... So I fixed that up and checked the connection at the radio end - that was also similarly joined - just makes you wonder which hack assembled the thing! Even more disturbing is how one can have a radio in that state of operation and do nothing about it....

How not to connect a VHF radio antenna

The radio was still not receiving any traffic, so I decided to wait for Ryan to take a look.. I  then made an attempt to install my automatic bilge pump.. In order to accomplish this I needed to pass a cable under the floor, from the bilge, through a conduit to the engine compartment and then through another conduit back to the instrument panel. I managed to pass the cable to the engine compartment, and I managed to use another cable to feed a piece of cord from the instrument panel back to the engine compartment... It was late in the day and I obviously made a mistake, so I ended up with all three in my hands, the original cable, the new cable and the piece of cord, I was going to use to drag the cables back... Boy was I annoyed!

So I called it a day, as Ryan was due to arrive the following day and three things were outstanding:

1) Good weather window

2) power quadrant

3) batten cars for my main.
4) windlass sockets and plug
5) T piece for BBQ.

And remembering lesson #3...