2022 Celtic Circuit, 1& 2 To Cowes and Portland.

It would be best for new readers or those who are non sailors to check out my new (Nov 2022) blog introduction (Opens in a new tab / window) that explains how I go about writing the blog, its limitations whilst I am writing it whilst cruising and what some terms mean.

A north easterly breeze delayed my departure for half an hour as the boats were being blown inshore onto the pickup line, moving it to the other side would not help as the boats downstream would block my way out shoreside where there is little water at low tide. I had to wait for a lull and for the flood to start overcoming the wind allowing me to get the boat out. Once out it was a bit tricky getting into the main channel as there were dozens of boats going down river, on the third attempt I made it out and joined the queue to get out of the Hamble.  

It got rather dangerous around Hamble Point Buoy when two idiots driving large displacement power boats in the middle of a large group of boats abruptly accelerated creating a huge wash Sancerre, about 30 yards away, rolled a gunnel under and I suspect at least one other boat did the same. There could easily have been collisions especially if boats had still been on autopilot which generally can’t respond to such violent deviations quickly enough, fortunately I saw it coming alerted by the roar of engines and grabbed the tiller in time and “only” briefly went about 45 degrees of course.

The rest of the trip across to Cowes was straightforward and went as planned, slipping in ahead of a 200 boat parade celebrating the jubilee and lots more ready to start a race from the Royal Yacht Squadron’s line off west Cowes. 

Dodging east of the Bramble Bank where there
is an annual cricket between the Island Sailing
Club and the Royal Southern.
Bramble Bank - Wikipedia

Rather busy off Cowes and Osbourne Bay, and this is just the
boats with AIS transceivers switched on, a lot more would
not have one

Reaching the Folly Inn, I managed to get a slot without a boat rafted on me to make an early start practical, albeit with large catamarans in front and behind but I would be leaving heading into the flood tide so getting off in the forecast calm conditions would not be difficult.

A pleasant evening followed with decent food albeit chaotically served, most had finished theirs by the time I got my starter and I and all having the same main course did not get served until everyone else had finished theirs. After declining to pay for everyone, I paid my bill and was back on board fairly early and with the planned early start was in the bunk promptly.

A still unexplained bump in the night woke me at 04:00 thirty minutes before the alarm, there was no point in delaying, so I was under way at 04:30 springing off the pontoon with no trouble. The forecast was for variable winds F2 or 3 occasionally 4 but except for a few minutes I did not see F4 and was mainly sailing in F2 or less, so it was a bit of a struggle. 

AIS makes it so much easier to work out which crossing boats
are a real threat and which are not, in such a confined space
my parameters for automatically classifying dangerous targets,
those in red, tends to highlight too many boats, there is not much
you can do about it and is a reason skippers of large commercial
ships often filter out "class B" (small boat) returns.

The trip down the Solent was slow but pleasant in a NE wind sailing with the cruising chute and main but the wind gave out as I was just short of Hurst Castle and with commercial traffic coming the other way I put on the engine to go through the narrows into the north channel making c 10 knots over the ground, well before N. Head buoy I had the engine off making progress under sail.

Passing Hurst narrows and into the North Channel making up to 10 knots

over the ground - it would have been faster at springs. The cruising chute

"snuffed" but still up ready to be redeployed a few hundred yards later.

Short of Anvil Point I was only making c 2 knots and it was clear I would not get past Anvil and St Alban’s Head before the tide changed so I reverted to engine because I wanted to get to Portland to take the inshore route at the optimal time on Monday, a days delay would mean starting an hour later on Tuesday. The wind perked up short of St Alban’s so I reverted to sail but should have held on for another twenty minutes or so as I missed the tidal gate and spent a long time getting past.

Punching the tide off St Albans under sail. You would not want to be

here in bad weather!

50 miles in Fourteen and three quarter hours of which 4.5 was under power but that did include well over an hour getting down the Medina river and more entering Portland harbour.

Click here for Day 3 to Hope Cove.

2022 Summer, almost ready to go!

I'll finish loading the boat tomorrow (Thursday) then go back to the boat by train (Oh Joy! 😔) and the club launch on Friday. 

There is likely to be a busy couple of hours on Saturday getting to the Folly Inn upriver from Cowes for the RAFYC event on Saturday night. I had anticipated going over in a leisurely way during the afternoon to give boats time to disperse from Cowes week that ends on Friday and to arrive just before high water. 

Then a local notice to mariners was published announcing that 200 boats would be taking part in a "motor past" as part of the jubilee celebrations leaving Osbourne Bay at 13:30 and heading for a reviewing ship (presumably with some Royals aboard) just off Cowes. So the Medina and Cowes is likely to be busy in late morning and starting at 13:30 there will be a stream of boats going across the entrances to Cowes, I would be "stand on vessel" for the actual parade but would not be popular barging through!

Also there will be twenty 70 ft boats racing in the area from 10:00 and a hundred dayboats starting a passage race from west Cowes at 13:40, with the forecast winds they may well be heading East or Northeast on the first leg, hopefully they will be given a downwind, into the tide start to deconflict them with the parade, but I would not bank on it. Numerous other events are also taking place.

So my plan has changed, I will slip as soon as the flood has started on the Hamble which should be about 11:15 and hopefully with some help from the engine, I will get past the reviewing vessel between 13:00 and 13:30 before the boats leave Osbourne Bay and by which time most of those those taking part will be east of their start point. By using the east channel I should also be able to avoid the dayboats starting off west Cowes who by then should be close to their start line.

I just hope that the pontoon at the Folly will have space when I get there (we have spaces book but I don't know when from), fortunately as it will be a neap tide there should be enough water to manoeuvre on to it and hopefully not too much current which can be an issue single handed if I have to approach down tide.

The trip proper will then start early on Sunday taking the ebb down the Solent heading for Portland harbour which might be a bit of a stretch with lightish winds forecast, but the Lulworth range will be closed so it should be doable under sail although I might have to wait for the second ebb tide that starts off St Alban's Head at about 18:00. Then it will be the inshore route round the Bill on Monday leaving the at 05:00 and a day or two to get past "The Start".

Click here for the first couple of days.

Repainting Days 6 - 9

This is the last post of a thread, to start at the beginning click here.

An exhausting week with afternoon temperatures in the high 70's (and it hit 100 in the cabin) painting had to be done early, fortunately humidity at c 65% overnight was well below the maximum (80%) but three starts from home between 04:00 and 05:00s  and one from the RAFYC was tiring.

Even when I started painting at 06:00 well before I was half way through it was very difficult to "keep a wet edge", I was working on strips about 6" wide and even that did not work when I had to move the staging.

After 1 gloss coat.

After 3 top coats with the new boot line.

Working on the transom, was difficult!

The port side is not as good although it looks ok from a distance, the perils of painting in a heat wave and in deep shade when you can't see what you have overcoated and what you haven't and the fully thinned paint is too dry to fix in a minute or two. Day 9 was spent refitting hardware, doing the boot line, anti-fouling around the seacocks applying new vinyl graphics and refitting the engine inlet strainer and hose work.

Port side after 3 coats. It the weather had been kinder I would have
spent a day rubbing this side down and another day painting but with
temperatures heading to 90 degrees that was not practical and I was
cream crackered. I'll probably have the boat out of the water next summer
for antifouling which would be an opportunity to rub down and re-coat.

The rubber bumpers on the transom are to protect
the hull from the mooring lines on my "Trot mooring"
that during the strong ebb tide lie across the stern. 

Providing the Seacock is finished in time (it was delivered with the wrong handle and the replacement smaller butterfly type has not yet arrived) she will be relaunched on Wednesday the 20th which at the time of writing should be the first day with more reasonable temperatures - but still c 75 degrees.  I'll then go back to the few jobs I was meant to have been doing before the seacock incident ahead of my next cruise scheduled to start on the 5th or 6th August.

Launched, rather later than the yard planned but
good for getting onto the mooring during the first
stand. Although that got complicated as someone
had parked on my mooring, the second time this year
 and I have only been away once! Fortunately, the
operator of the moorings found me a spare.

The travails of Seacock replacement

The new composite 3/4 inch sink outlet

With the boat safely out of the water this was meant to be straightforward.

For the sink outlet it generally was, the only real problem for the guy doing it was fairly tight access, I had removed the access door to the compartment which is restricted in its movement by the cooker and the heater outlet which proved sufficient. 

He removed the old fitting, tidied up the hole and took back the antifouling etc on the outside of the hull and smoothed it flat before fitting the new skin fitting and seacock.

Note that there is no pigment in the glass fibre, Chris Butler the designer believed that not using any below the waterline helped prevent Osmosis, which is unheard of in his boats, at least those used in salt water and not flooded with fresh.

The new seacock lower left, fresh water pump
top right, fresh water filter top left and the
disconnected warm air duct.

The problem was with the failed engine water intake. 

Note the mound of glass fibre around the skin
fitting which is holding the fitting in place.

When the old fitting and the build up of glass fibre around the skin fitting was removed it was found that the hole through the hull was way oversized. 

The oversized  hole, > 1.5" for the engine water inlet .
The Seacock was 3/4" BSP with a reducing elbow to 1/2".

It is not clear why or when this was done, the skin fitting appears to have been recessed and had been modified with an integral mesh strainer partially removed (apart from the large external fitting there is a stand alone strainer near the engine which has not had anything in it since I have had the boat). The skin fitting was held in by the internal fibreglass "mound" and just rested on filler in and around the hull aperture.

To fit a new seacock the hull has had to be "re-laminated", not a simple process and was a days work by the yard - NOT cheap!! 😞

The hole cleaned up and the hull progressively taken back ready
for multiple layers of glass fibre matting to be applied over the
plugged hole

The glass fibre applied before application of a surface filler.

Inside almost ready for laminating with
glass fibre & epoxy.

Re-lamination almost complete.

Fitting the new seacock should now be straightforward. The only problem (hopefully) is that the yard did not have a 1/2" (outlet) seacock in stock and it did not get delivered when expected. Hopefully that will not be long delayed. When fitted I need to treat all of the exposed fibre glass with waterproof primer (International Primocon) then apply multiple layers of anti-foul on the outside and some bilge paint (International Danboline) on the inside then refit the strainer and hoses.

It took a while and I am still missing the compact butterfly handle
but it was finished on Wednesday 20th, just before re-launch.

Unfortunately, this was not an end to my problems as explained in my post "I really, really did not want to do this".

Repainting Days 3 - 5.

The raised boot line with one coat in each colour done on days 1
and 2, additional coats will go on when I do the area around the
sea cocks and some work done on the fin before one coat all over.
Most of the damaged areas are now under the boot line.

After adjusting the boot line the next job was removing hardware that would get in the way such as the clam shell covers over the anchor locker drains, then rubbing down and masking up. I also took advantage of an overcast day to get undercoat on the transom which will always be in direct sun, the port side I can paint in the morning when it is in shade and the starboard side about lunch time. The damaged areas above the boot line also got a covering of undercoat to help level them up so as not to show when the job is finished. That took a day and a bit.

Working on the transom was a bit of a problem, this did not work
that well as I was working left handed and stretching. I subsequently
borrowed a large bulk of timber > a foot square to stand on which
was a bit easier when I was rubbing down.

A first go with the new International Paints undercoat.

The balance of the forth day was getting the undercoat on, this was International's new combined primer and undercoat "One Up", very thick in the can but liquid with only 5% thinners (max under 25 degrees C is 10%).  I found that coverage and finish was better with the brush than with the roller but with a higher risk of runs or curtains which I managed to avoid on the upper moulding which could not be done with the roller but I did get a couple on the transom in almost out of reach areas.

I rather like this colour and it would be somewhat cooler but the
top coat is not available in this colour and I'm in any case I am
not sure what it would look like in gloss.

Day 5 was a real pain, 8 hours of rubbing down.

Most damaged areas are no longer visible and those that are before
the top coat are only just visible at close range (colour is a
bit off in this picture due to the flash).

A day off tomorrow as the weather looks marginally more favourable on Saturday and Sunday although rather hot, but next week could be even hotter and I need to get two coats on in three days to save rubbing down.

Finishing the job.

Repainting days 1 & 2

And long days, at least for me, 10.5 hours on the job after an hour and threequarters traveling down on Friday and 7.5 hours plus the return trip today after staying at the RAFYC overnight to limit travelling to about 15 minutes each way.

The damage is not as bad as it first appeared although it still requires a full repaint which was confirmed by a pro working on the next boat. 

Firstly the damaged is fairly localised and the power washer exposed most of it, I was able to peal and chip off more, mainly on the smaller areas, but the the rest of the paint close to the waterline was still firmly attached.

Secondly the pin pick bubbles / blisters and holes visible just above the boot line only penetrated the very thin top coat - so thin that if you press moderately hard 320 wet and dry used wet goes through the top coat in about three strokes. It would appear that the weed got that far before I was able to get it off and the holes were not big enough for water to make things worse.

Given both of these I was able to give up a possible approach of stripping a 3 - 4 inch band the length of the boat just above the boot line and be a more targeted which saves a lot of time as although the top coat is thin and some of the undercoat & primer not well attached where it is attached it is a devil to get off and very difficult to get a clean edge.

To hopefully stop this happening again the boot line needs to be raised (again) and given it is already too wide that means the bottom has to come up as well as the top. Specialist power tools would help but I don't have them.

The jobs in this session were to clean off as much crud as possible from the topsides, take the edges of damaged areas back to sound paint and prepare the gloss above the boot line for priming whilst removing any pin holes in the top coat or further down. The damaged areas and the area under the new boot line then have to be primed and the damages areas given multiple undercoats to bring the level up to the existing gloss. During this sesson I did not prepare the entire topside for painting due to time constraints and instead spent some time on the boot line - that will need multiple coats on the top to give protection and on the bottom for the blue to effectively cover the white. Although each coat does not take long the masking is a pain. When finished the entire underwater section will get a coat of antifoul to match things up and, with the three coats given last winter, should last me through next season hopefully saving a lift out and block off this winter.

Port side forward as damaged pieces tidied up and the strip above
the old boot line prepared for priming.

Port side aft at the same time. The bare looking patch in the boot
line was probably caused by something I hit earlier in the
year, it might have been a particularly sturdy pot marker but
it was dark at the time and although on deck I could not see
it in the dark (this was not the pot markers I became entangled
with in the dark of St Ives).

And the other side.

The floor mop is very handy for cleaning the topside from ground
level and the bottom from the dinghy.

Raising the bottom of the boot line, 1st coat. The top is masked
ready for a coat of Primacon with gaps to allow for priming the
damaged pieces most of which will end up under the anti-fouled
boot line but with small bits above. Some but alas not all of the
irregulates in the line were removed after the pic but before painting,
 hopefully it should be correctable on the next couple of coats.

The area above the boot line and the damaged areas are now primed and a first coat of white antifoul applied to the boot line but I omitted to take pictures before leaving.

Click here for days 3 - 5.