Last weekend we finally got out for our first sail of the season, which feels crazily late for us. The northerly winds did try to kid us into thinking that it was still late February or early March – I was certainly wearing enough layers for it to have been!
First stop: a “relaxed” downwind sail to Cowes. Relaxed in as far a sail plan, but not so much for collision avoidance as it felt like we found nearly all the race fleets to have to pick our way through.
First dodge: RS 21s…next up SB20s….then the J70 fleet! Luckily by the time we needed to sail through the Cape 31’s course they were at the other end of it.
On arrival in Cowes Mike took the opportunity to finish fitting his latest project: the outboard bracket. After the compulsory level of any boat job faff (because it’s only in myth that you get the right combination of bolt and washer first time round!) it’s a perfect fit and the wood looked gorgeous in the sunshine.
Now Mike will have to find the next project to justify playing with his woodwork tools! 😛
After some chilling with a book and continuing with outstanding gel coat repairs, we bumped into some friends on a neighbouring boat so our evening ended up far more social than initially anticipated. This is certainly an element of sailing we enjoy 🙂 …and it offers a great opportunity to exchange useful solutions for boat friendly cooking gadgets or recipes!
Thanks to our social evening, Sunday morning started more slowly than we had planned. Even WeatherWitch didn’t seem to be feeling it when we tried to get the music groove going!
Once we had all got going (yes, even Spotify sorted itself out eventually) we had a most enjoyable sail back to the Hamble with both sails up this time. It was good to check everything still works, though I’m not sure Mike and I were convinced our arm muscles were after having to put in quite a few more tacks than we’d hoped…
The mystery!
On our way over to Cowes we spotted that something looked odd at the top of the mast…from what we could see from deck level it appeared that one of our aerials (not sure whether the VHF or AIS as both still appeared to be working) had fallen out of its holder along with the windex that was on it. When Mike went up the mast to check we found a much bigger mystery – not only was the aerial not in its holder…it was no longer there at all (also no windex) and nor was the tricolour section of our masthead light!
While initially we had thought maybe the recent storms had defeated the aerial, this didn’t seem to account for the tricolour! Our current best guess is either they lost a fight with a large bird…or a drone.
Luckily we hadn’t quite got around to fitting the LED anchor light/tricolour unit, so Mike was able to get that fitted to replace the damaged one straight away. The aerial and windex will have to wait for another day, as will working out what that aerial actually connects to!
