What a May day

 Well, technically more April than May but who can resist a cunning pun. Not me, for sure.

So we kicked off the 2026 "sailing" season (and hopefully the quotation marks will prove erroneous) with the usual mad dash to do all the jobs that have to be done before launching. Actually, this year there wasn't too much to do as the relatively truncated season last year meant a lot of things, like anodes, seacock serviving etc., could be carried forward.

We got down to the boat a week last Friday and got straight on with things on Saturday.

Pagan did need a fresh coat of barnacle food (a.k.a. antifoul) and a good check all round but that was all pretty much done and dusted in a couple of days.

Monday saw me head down to Sussex to pick the new domestic batterys and charger / inverter. In the end, it made financial and time management sense to collect rather than have them delivered even though it wasted half a day plus. I got back in time to make a start with the install so all was not lost.

Tuesday, however, was a washout. I had one of my occasional bad days (low grade headache, mildly upset tummy, general lethargy etc., best summed up as feeling ugh). I think these days, which happen every few weeks, may be migraine related (I also suffer from classic (a.k.a. real!) migraines (which are not just a bad headache). Anyway, write off Tuesday like it never happened.

Fitting the bulky and heavy charger / inverter in the chosen spot tucked up out of the way in the port cockpit locker wasn't much fun but it got done. I had to strip out redundant components of the original autopilot and loads of redundant wiring and work in a rather awkward space (nothing new there then) but I got there in the end. 

Then, with just a teeny bit of wood butchery, I managed to squeeze the new batteries into the battery compartment under the navigators seat. That also wasn't easy as each battery weights 33kg!

Friday was The Big Day.

Yep, time to get her back in her element. And as always the first task when she's lowered into the water is a mad dash around all the underwater intakes and outlets to make sure there's no leaks.

Happily, there were no leaks! Always a relief.

Once alongside the pontoon and safely tied up, the next question was would the engine start. Yep, first turn of the key! There's no reason to doubt that she would start but our confidence in the engine needs rebuilding.

The weekend saw me sorting out the very heavy duty 12v wiring between the new battery bank and the charger inverter. It's meaty 70sq.mm. cable and had to be run through from under the nav table to the port locker and kept as short as possible. Annoyingly, the port fuel tank is in the way of taking the most direct, and least visible, route so I had to run the cables across a visible bulkhead. I'll box that in at a later date. Making up the cables and wiring everything up took a lot of time so it was this morning before I finished the 240v side of the wiring.

And lo! It all worked like a charm.

So we now have a pair of Victron Super Cycle 120a/h AGM batteries coupled to a Victron Multiplus 12/2000/80 charger / inverter with a remote Multicontroller panel at the nav station.

That gives us 80A battery charging when plugged in to an external mains supply and 1600W continous with up to 2000W for short periods of mains power from the inverter when we're not plugged in. Being super cycle batteriers, the battery bank can be regularly discharged by 80% of the rated capacity and will survive being completely discharged occasionally.

There's much more to do on that side of things (battery monitor, solar panels etc.) but it's a very good start.

Once that was done, late morning, it was time to sort out for getting back on our mooring. Dig out the outboard, fetch some fresh petrol, unload anything not needed overnight from the boat etc. Then a dinghy trip up to our mooring to put the mooring tails back on (they're removed for the winter otherwise they end up as a tangled mess of rope and weed) before, with a coffee break to wait for the tide to turn, firing up the Merc and casting off.

We picked up the mooring first time of asking although it has to be admitted that the conditions couldn't have been any better - virtually no wind, flat calm and an ebb tide. Then it was a case of make all shipshape on deck and relax.

 

It's good to be back on our mooring!

One last night on board tonight and then it's away home in the morning.

We've got a fortnight plus lined up towards the end of June and I'm hoping to get down for a few days to work on the to-do list before then (if the big shed will give Jane the time off as she'll need to stay home with the venerable parent while I'm away).

PS. No, there are no photos of the wiring. I'm perfectly happy with *my* efforts but the rest of the wiring on Pagan is, frankly, a mess. I'm working on it but I'm not showing it off!!!