An aside while things are still fresh in the memory...
Something Jane and I are keen to do is to ween ourselves off a dependency on marinas. So three days on the hook and using the dinghy to get ashore for supplies was good practice.
There's no problem with life aboard Pagan at anchor. Even with slightly less than ideal conditions (It was fairly breezy) nobody felt at all unhappy bobbing about in the bay at La Grande Greve.
However, we did have a number of issues...
We currently have no means of knowing exactly how much water is in the tank. After a few days that starts to loom large in the skippery brain. A simple sight tube would be easy to add to the system, a proper sender and gauge would be better still. One or the other is needed asap.
Our only means of charging the batteries off grid is the engine. Had we remained on the hook for even one more day I'd have had to run the engine for a few hours which isn't good for the engine or the wallet. We need at least one or preferably several solar panels.
The Avon Rover 3.1 dinghy i acquired for a song from a friend of dad's is simply too big for the boat. There's no way it can be inflated on board and it's too heavy to be carried up a beach. The roundtail dinghy that my friend David loaned us last summer when our old dinghy was damaged is an ideal size but lacks the buoyancy at the stern to carry a modern 4 stroke outboard.
So the 3.1 needs to be sold on and a suitable transom stern dinghy acquired.
Carrying the dinghy up the beach was an effort for three of us. It would have been a real chore for two. Transom wheels are a must.
I had a planning fail of fairly epic proportions with the whole excursion ashore. We should have been ashore at least two hours earlier, we should have checked the state of the tide when we got ashore and we should have made the effort to carry the dinghy all the way up the beach.
As a result, our time ashore was rushed when, with better planning, we could have had most of the day to explore Sark. It's a lesson learnt and in my defence this was our first time going ashore from an anchorage. We'll do it better next time!
Anchoring is a pain in the bottom at the moment. It's sufficiently troublesome to be off putting.
The first problem is that the venerable CQR is not self launching. It has to be man, or woman, handled off the bow roller. It's heavy and neither of the ladies is comfortable standing on the foredeck when the boat is bobbing around. Nor is either of them at all keen on doing the cockpit end of the job unfortunately.
So a self launching anchor is on the shopping list.
The next problem is a combination of the probably past it's use by date chain and the manual anchor windlass.
The chain is getting rusty, especially towards the little used last ten or fifteen meters that normally lurks undisturbed in the chain locker. It doesn't run out or recover cleanly on the windlass gypsy. It tends to jam or kink or otherwise seek to frustrate the efforts of the foredeck crew.
If we can afford to do nothing else, we simply must replace the chain asap. And we need more than 50m while we're at it. We had 45m out to get a 3:1 scope at HW in La Grande Greve which was adequate for the conditions and holding (reckoned to be very good at that end of the bay). Had the wind got up or, worse, changed direction we'd have needed a good deal more. So 80m I think plus a goodly length of warp too.
Even with good chain, recovering 40 or 50 metres of chain with the manual windlass is going to be bloody hard work. It's also slow work. It's a disincentive to anchoring out and worse it's a disincentive to lifting the hook and shifting if we haven't got the pick down in the right spot first time. We did shift the anchor in La Grande Greve after we'd been sat there a while (because we'd dropped back too close to another boat) but there was no enthusiasm for the job!
So an electric anchor windlass is also moved up the desirables shopping list. And coupled with a self launching and stowing (another issue with the CQR) anchor, a remote control and a chain counter, anchoring will be as easy as sailing into a bay, picking your spot and pressing a button. Like what we all enviously watched other people doing over the last few days. Gits!
Something Jane and I are keen to do is to ween ourselves off a dependency on marinas. So three days on the hook and using the dinghy to get ashore for supplies was good practice.
There's no problem with life aboard Pagan at anchor. Even with slightly less than ideal conditions (It was fairly breezy) nobody felt at all unhappy bobbing about in the bay at La Grande Greve.
However, we did have a number of issues...
We currently have no means of knowing exactly how much water is in the tank. After a few days that starts to loom large in the skippery brain. A simple sight tube would be easy to add to the system, a proper sender and gauge would be better still. One or the other is needed asap.
Our only means of charging the batteries off grid is the engine. Had we remained on the hook for even one more day I'd have had to run the engine for a few hours which isn't good for the engine or the wallet. We need at least one or preferably several solar panels.
The Avon Rover 3.1 dinghy i acquired for a song from a friend of dad's is simply too big for the boat. There's no way it can be inflated on board and it's too heavy to be carried up a beach. The roundtail dinghy that my friend David loaned us last summer when our old dinghy was damaged is an ideal size but lacks the buoyancy at the stern to carry a modern 4 stroke outboard.
So the 3.1 needs to be sold on and a suitable transom stern dinghy acquired.
Carrying the dinghy up the beach was an effort for three of us. It would have been a real chore for two. Transom wheels are a must.
I had a planning fail of fairly epic proportions with the whole excursion ashore. We should have been ashore at least two hours earlier, we should have checked the state of the tide when we got ashore and we should have made the effort to carry the dinghy all the way up the beach.
As a result, our time ashore was rushed when, with better planning, we could have had most of the day to explore Sark. It's a lesson learnt and in my defence this was our first time going ashore from an anchorage. We'll do it better next time!
Anchoring is a pain in the bottom at the moment. It's sufficiently troublesome to be off putting.
The first problem is that the venerable CQR is not self launching. It has to be man, or woman, handled off the bow roller. It's heavy and neither of the ladies is comfortable standing on the foredeck when the boat is bobbing around. Nor is either of them at all keen on doing the cockpit end of the job unfortunately.
So a self launching anchor is on the shopping list.
The next problem is a combination of the probably past it's use by date chain and the manual anchor windlass.
The chain is getting rusty, especially towards the little used last ten or fifteen meters that normally lurks undisturbed in the chain locker. It doesn't run out or recover cleanly on the windlass gypsy. It tends to jam or kink or otherwise seek to frustrate the efforts of the foredeck crew.
If we can afford to do nothing else, we simply must replace the chain asap. And we need more than 50m while we're at it. We had 45m out to get a 3:1 scope at HW in La Grande Greve which was adequate for the conditions and holding (reckoned to be very good at that end of the bay). Had the wind got up or, worse, changed direction we'd have needed a good deal more. So 80m I think plus a goodly length of warp too.
Even with good chain, recovering 40 or 50 metres of chain with the manual windlass is going to be bloody hard work. It's also slow work. It's a disincentive to anchoring out and worse it's a disincentive to lifting the hook and shifting if we haven't got the pick down in the right spot first time. We did shift the anchor in La Grande Greve after we'd been sat there a while (because we'd dropped back too close to another boat) but there was no enthusiasm for the job!
So an electric anchor windlass is also moved up the desirables shopping list. And coupled with a self launching and stowing (another issue with the CQR) anchor, a remote control and a chain counter, anchoring will be as easy as sailing into a bay, picking your spot and pressing a button. Like what we all enviously watched other people doing over the last few days. Gits!
No comments:
Post a Comment