Three weddings.. err.. Two deliveries and a lift out..

Two deliveries, a lift out, and one post..

Clearly the end of the season as it's all lift outs and deliveries currently...  first one out was AmiLy last Thursday..

A bitter sweet moment really as I'm still not 100% sure whether she'll still be with us next year - totally up to the skipper, but as a group we have had some cracking times on her so there's some emotional attachment for sure..

Either way, a simple delivery from her home pontoon to Port Solent where she'll spend the winter.. didn't take very long, just under an hour and that included the locking in at Port Solent, but my oh my it was chilly - a very brisk northerly with some teeth in it on a bright day - the seasons are a changing...

Left her on the lift out pontoon ready for first thing Friday morning, and went up to the pub to cheer ourselves up.. 😏

Log:

Distance: 4.2 (cumulative total in the mileage tab at the top)
Wind (Speed; Direction):  F5 gusting F6 ; N
Sail Plan: n/a
Speed (Max/average in knots): 5.5 / 3.5

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..and then on to the lift out, which was mine..  fairly pain free to be honest - no major issues., and at this point largely all done and dusted. Just have to retrieve the top tackle from the mooring which I'm hoping to do this afternoon (as I write).

It was a 13:23 HT and a massive 4.87m but true to form most of the skippers were in the yard waiting by 10:00... despite the near constant heavy drizzle..😏

Bloody miserable day..

Cups of tea and chats followed as we watched the rain - I pretty much don't see most of them from one end of the season to the other as most of the time we're all off sailing our own boats and doing 'stuff', and me especially despite being a member of one, I'm not really a very "club-able" person so I don't do the social stuff... 😁

😁

Anyway - managed to get a lift out to Sparrow to save having to discombobulate the tender, and then according to the club cameras I came under the bridge around half eleven, and squeezed into a Sparrow sized gap on the pontoon waiting my turn - which came about an hour and a half later..

Last year the club is made moves to meet new environmental requirements that are being discussed/mooted/suggested at Harbour Board level - both harbours are SSSI's, and also a whole load of other acronyms (Ramsar site/Special Protection Area/Nature Conservation Review sites/Special Areas of Conservation) and the bottom line is that biocide based antifoul is becoming increasingly unpopular so the club started power washing boats on lift out to contain the wash off. Last year was very basic, and just to prove the concept worked (we have 80+ boats coming ashore so any process we put in place can't slow down the lift too much, or the crews end up lifting boats all month) this year it has been improved with a sheltered wash off area with sand bags to contain fluid...  next year I think they were talking about separator tanks..

From my perspective as an owner it was great - my boat gets washed with some seriously powerful jet washers so I don't have to grovel in the mud doing it with my trusty Black and Decker - this year though, they also expect owners to help with the pressure washing so it was also seriously messy.

Other good news?? I think the Tiger Xtra was marginally better than the previous one I was using so the extra money was well spent..  barnacles are the killer on a mud mooring, but this year the spread was significantly less - the inside of both keels, the hull between the keels, and also slightly forward were festooned, but the rest of the hull expect for the water line and rudder were just slime - good result.

Not a bad spot in the yard either.. the problems will come next year as the way they're stacked it'll be first in, last out.. 😁

Took the engine off while I had the chance to get the car near (as of yesterday she was already behind another line of boats) and gave that a rinse through early the next morning - the weather had taken a turn for the worse and lift out that day was cancelled anyway so I could have stayed in bed another hour..

So - as of this minute - everything is either done, or planned to be done, that is needed to put her to bed for the winter..

• new battery is waiting to be fitted
• engine is rinsed and home
• sails and boom are home and stored
• she's pressure washed
• top tackle is recovered, been pressure washed, and is hanging in the garage

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Which then brings us to the second delivery - Dave's boat is the same side of the bridge as me but is considerably bigger and he chooses to sail round the (Hayling) island for lift out. So it was that most of the Jolly Boys went for their last sail of the season on a day considerably different to the one before! Sun and warmth in mid October, madness!

14:31 HT and at 4.56m, less than Monday but still chunky..  we met on the hard at 11:00, and went out to Dave's in his rub a dub finally dropping the mooring at about quarter to 12..  wind was a SW'ly and I suspect F4 gusting F5. Due to the fact we needed to get round pronto to meet the lift out we knew it wasn't going to be an amble but the tide conspired to make much of the first leg exactly that..  at the top of the harbour the angle was good enough to get the jib out to an extra three quarters of a knot, but by the time we'd gone past Marker the angle was bad so it was rolled away and we slogged on out of the harbour - we went past HISC doing 1.1kts SOG! The one bright spot was picking up some speed by going inshore of the moored yachts leading to HISC - think we picked up a back eddy..  definitely speedier.

Turned west just after the Bar Beacon and headed across Hayling Bay where we picked up some real pace - jib was out again and that was where we were seeing a succession of 5's and 6's..  cut the corner on the Winner as the tide was up, headed through the harbour entrance, and a little over 3.5 hours later we were along side the pontoon waiting for our slot...

Which wasn't long - the team asked Dave to nudge her into the slip as the tide was dropping and they'd pick him up from there - seemed only polite for Smithy and I to wave bye bye to Dave while we headed to the clubhouse for a much needed tea... 😁

..and that was pretty much it - before we knew it he was out, washed off, and parked two over from me..

What a cracking way to end the season that trip across the Bay was though! 😊

Log:

Distance: 15.14 (cumulative total in the mileage tab at the top)
Wind (Speed; Direction):  F4 gusting F5 ; SW
Sail Plan: Engine and jib
Speed (Max/average in knots): 6.7 / 3.8

Mast down..

...it's always  bit of a lottery finding the time and people to get the mast down, but this time we also had to throw weather and tide into the equation... 

I thought I'd done it last week when we agreed on Wednesday (today as I write); four people and a tide that although a little early wasn't too early. Over the weekend the Autumn weather gods laughed in my face at my puny arrangements and scheduled in a bucket load of rain..  the weather I was hoping for had shifted to a day earlier.

With an hours earlier tide, and peoples availability still to decide, I threw the dice again, and this time we came up with three - which is just enough, if not optimal, for a mast drop on a 20 footer...😏

So it was that we made arrangements to meet at the tender pen at 0800, in order to make the most of an 08:54, 3.88m, tide...  I figured that would give us 3 hours, as this time we were going to do mast drops on two boats. Mate Simon, of 'Marcy' (which is on the mooring next to mine), usually takes his boat into one of the local marinas to take the mast down with a derrick/crane, but I'd suggested we do it and save him the hundred spondoolicks - foolishly he agreed.. 😁

As is usual the night before a mast drop I didn't sleep well and I was there early as I wanted to get the boat ready before the others arrived - glorious morning, not a breath of wind - perfect!

Once the rest arrived, we had a quick conflab and Simon agreed we should do 'Sparrow' first as he'd not seen a mast drop using an A frame before (other than on YouTube), and it would give him an idea of what we were doing, how we did it, and what it looked like.. 

...just attached the A frame and mast crutch (at the back)..

Anyway - it was an absolutely quintessentially good mast drop (no point repeating it but here's what I do [clicky]), and pausing only for Dave and I to do a quick tidy, Simon went over to his boat to start getting ready. 

..all down safe and sound, and wonder of wonders the windex is still there! 😁

We then went over to 'Marcy' to have a play - guessing it was about HT at this point and fog was rolling in quicky (at one point we lost sight of Northney)

..Dave "blanket stitching" all the shrouds lines and furler to the mast...

The mast drop on Simon's boat was also good - some differences to 'Sparrow', as 'Marcy' has a hinged mast foot rather than a tabernacle but other than that, the mast sizes/connections are about the same. Simon made a very natty mast crutch that sits on a board that sits in the cockpit (liked that idea), and the A frame ('Mk1' he calls it)  was made from some poles left over from his daughters trampoline 😁.

It worked really well, but we agreed it needed a couple of feet extra length as it didn't reach beyond the furler, which meant supporting the furler as it came down was a little more awkward (as it's 'outside' of the frame)... but as a first go it was about as good as it gets!

With water now beginning to disappear it was back to the clubhouse for pork pies, pastries and tea..  cracking morning!

Notes: 

• one of the rowlock mounting blocks decided to disintegrate on the way back to shore (the other one had split last year so I was kind of expecting it)..  happily just a few feet from shore..😏 Need to make another ready for the weekend...
• new battery has arrived

....and just like that...

..it's all over for another season..  wasn't for the want of looking but I just couldn't get another sail in, sunny days and no wind, sunny days with wind but no tide, and increasing numbers of "blechhh" days where the wind and tide was good but the weather was the aforesaid... Sparrow's out on the 12th, and a number of things have to happen before then... but yet again I've gotten ahead of myself, because of course there's always more than one boat involved in the life of a Jolly Boy™

We'd also been trying to get a trip out on the Jolly Boy flagship, AmiLy, and were hoping that a two day'er was on the cards when, firstly the weather gods intervened and one of the two days was cancelled, and then on the surviving day, with tides not optimal (so meaning not enough time to get to Cowes or anywhere else for lunch 😁) we were met by a F5 gusting 6! With the best will in the world, just 2 or 3 hours sailing and all the faff that entails, in boisterous conditions (as we had to be back by a certain time because of tide) were not 'floating the boat' so in the end it was sausage baps, tea, talking 'bolleaux', and then we took the opportunity to get all the sails off her ready for her lift next week.. oh, and there may have been omelettes involved too..

Going to miss that view over the next 6 months..

Which was pretty much what I had to do as well (albeit absent the sausage baps and omelettes regrettably), and so it was that with another big Spring tide (is it me or are they always big Spring tides!) I found myself on Sparrow for the annual end of season tear down..

Beautiful day but again it was blowing old boots - not optimal for taking sails off, but I'm running out of time so needs must...

First order of the day was the main which on Sparrow comes home still attached to the boom - mainsheet, topping lift and kicker detached, remove the clip from the mast track to allow the slides to come out at the gate, then it's simply a matter of undoing the nut that holds the boom to the gooseneck and wrapping the sail cover round the front before dropping the whole lot into the dinghy ready for the pull home.

All looked in pretty good condition but I noticed the topping lift was looking a bit frayed - I'd guess it had been rubbing against the triangle on the back stay.. 

..did that whipping/rope replacement back in May '23 [clicky] so it's not done too badly,
but either way, a new job for the list... 😏

Next was the genoa.. the furler has never failed to absolutely delight this season, a complete game changer and one of those things (like the tiller pilot) that make you wonder why you hadn't done it years earlier, and so it was with the removal of the genoa - detached the sheets while it was still rolled and then it was just a simple matter of rolling it out from the foredeck by hand while controlling how quickly it unrolled with the furler line... it slid out of the track much more easily than it went in! 😏

Bundled it up (there's no way you can fold it on a 20 foot boat, in a F5, and on your own 😁) and that joined the boom/main in the tender ready for proper folding at home..

Much quicker than I expected so I decided I might do that topping lift there and then - it was sunny, warm, and good to be on the water, so checked the battery charge as ususal - all good with the battery showing just over 15v (which is pretty typical given it hadn't been switched on for a while, and was getting charge from the solar panel) but when I turned the VHF on (just for something to listen to while I was repairing the topping lift), about 10 minutes later I was getting a low battery alarm on the VHF display, and the battery monitor was showing it down to < 10v..  buggeration..  switched everything off and the voltage climbed, only for it to drop like a stone when something was turned on..  battery's knackered...   not holding a charge. 

So I swapped the battery last time in May '22, which means that little lump of lead and acid has been doing it's job for four and a half years, bless it..  👍 Not bad at all, very happy with that and better still, when I checked, they still sell them, and it's still the same price! Bargain - will order one next week and add the job to the winter maintenance list..

Oh, and the topping lift? Done..  chopped off to just after worn, with a new thimble as well - sewed and wrapped..  proper job..

Pausing only to leave my phone in the cockpit I wended my way home... 😬

...and yes, an hour later, and on the last legs of the tide I was back to collect the phone.. 😏