Back on Course

A far better day yesterday, afternoon, reasonable weather all afternoon and some lovely sunshine! Its starting to get warmer and Im in a tee shirt now. We had up to full sail up yesterday afternoon once the wind had calmed down a bit, it picked up again in the evening and I stowed the genoa which slowed us right down , but following a tip from Brian, trying a pillowcase size of genoa made a remarkable difference, the boat immediately went from 3 to 6 knots, I don’t understand it but don’t have to it works very nicely, I should have discovered this before but dont normally use the staysail for sailing around Scotland the staysail stay is detachable and normally stowed, I have used it a couple of times when I have had problems with the furler (hence I decided to buy a new furler for this trip- just in case) but hadn’t noticed any real lack of power, I suspect its to do with the waves occasionally killing the speed.

We are back to full sail again this morning and Ive done a couple of jobs, the engine room bilge had been slowly filling with water which is unusual and this turned out to be a failed jubilee clip on a new sea water pump, it had been overtightened but was catching a fitting as well as the hose so wasn’t clamping as well as it oughter.

The bilge pump for the engine space was also blowing its fuse, I’d expected it to be clogged but it turned out to be goosed, so I bailed a half bucket out of the compartment and hopefully it’ll not fill up again. The sprayhood also took a beating yesterday, a green lump of water landed on it and pulled the horrible plastic track out of the deck so I had a well venrilated cockpit for a bit, Ive temporarily re fitted it bit it needs a new alloy track to make it better.

I had a carbonara last night and, belatedly, wished that I hadn’t drunk the cream in the morning, having said that it was delicious anyway, I havent been being very creative in the galley as yet, neither have I been eating as much veg as I should be but when it’s bouncy it’s difficult to do anything complicated, I think that the haggis and neaps was the only thing so far involving more than one pan, … no, last night I I fried the bacon separately from the pasta.

I wonder how Scotland is getting on at the rugby, I think they played at the weekend.