Crane-out 2016

Day one of crane-out was wet, windy and cold. Most of my wet weather gear was onboard, so I had to cobble together an eclectic array of clothing that should have kept me substantially dry.

Like many others, I still got thoroughly soaked.

By mid-morning I felt something snap on my right hand. My finger didn’t feel broken so I carried on, stopping to check my limp finger tip every now and then. Eventually, I accepted that something wasn’t quite right and went in search of a second opinion. The second opinion I found suggested that I needed to pop over to A&E, and following an X-Ray the diagnosis was something called ‘Mallet Finger’, which means that my tendon had snapped. Treatment was a small finger splint to be worn 24/7 until the end of the year, and then a further month wearing the splint at night. Zang!

My injury did nothing to prevent the unrelenting approach of the season’s low point.

When the tide arrived the following day, we brought our Macwester Malin over to the harbour ready for crane-out. We had a short 15 minute wait before the dreaded event was upon us.

The wind had dropped, and the lift went reasonably well. I say ‘reasonably’, because there was some contact between the crane lifting gear, and some delicate equipment at the top of our main mast. At this stage I’m not sure if any remedial action is required.

Moments later our twin-keel yacht was heading for what will become her home for the next six months. This year we have a slightly different spot, roughly twenty feet away from last year, on more even ground.

Once our Macwester Malin was safely deposited on her wooden blocks, we stowed some items and checked that everything was present and correct before turning our attention to other outstanding tasks. Above; muddy antifoul paint power-washed a few days after crane-out – it’s a task that’s easier before the mud and paint dry out.

One of the traditions the crew and I have is rowing our dinghy over to the club one last time, however that was going to be more complicated than normal given the damage to my finger. Hoping to avoid being labelled a finger-malingerer, I was keen to row the tender round as usual …but I was overruled. Instead the club boat did the job for us in a matter of moments.

As crane-out weekend drew to a close, just prior to heading up to the club patio for a consolation beer, I noticed the view through our sprayhood from our new spot on the hard-standing. In that instance, I knew that it wouldn’t be long until I find myself staring out at that view, gently rocking back and forwards on the balls of my feet.

The long wait for crane-in 2017 begins.

Winterisation & off-season meandering

It’s been over two months since crane-out and it’s hard to believe that there’s another four months before the new season, as crane-in 2015 is scheduled for the 18th of April.

As always, one of the first jobs we do is to pressure wash our Macwester Malin’s bottom. You can see a before and after patch in the inset above. This year we got the engine winterised quickly and after removing the sails and cockpit tent amongst other chores we turned our attention to our dinghy.

My attitude to our dinghy is to make sure that it’s serviceable, but I see no reason to spend huge amounts of time, effort and cash on it, as that only increases it’s appeal to thieves. This year however, we splashed out on some fendering.

The justification for spending the money was not related to the dinghy; we wanted to stop the dunts that the dinghy delivers to our Malin’s hull when we’re on the mooring and the weather’s a bit on the lively side. Hopefully the new rubber will do a better job than the original wooden strake was doing.

We made great progress on all maintenance jobs and we were finished well ahead of schedule due mainly to the great autumn and early winter weather.

When we weren’t at the yacht club, we were typically out and about for walks and day trips up and down the Firth of Forth. The above shot shows one of the bats that were zipping up and down the edge of the promenade just along from our mooring.

In early December we popped up to the East Neuk by car and after a good lunch by the open fire in the Dreel Tavern, we meandered down the coast from Anstruther to Elie. To the bottom right of the image above you can spot one of the seals in the harbour at dusk in Pittenweem. We watched two or three seals compete with the gulls for the scraps from the fishing trawlers.

The recent “weather bomb” that hit Scotland looked phenomenal up the north-west coast of Scotland, but thankfully didn’t have the same impact on the east. The weather has become more unsettled though and that’s likely to slow down the good progress we’ve been making.

Mustn’t grumble; we’ve been very lucky so far.

Polypropylene thruster buster

 

Last time out on our Macwester Malin, our Max Power CT35 bow thruster started making a noise like a handful of memory sticks in a blender. After taking advice and running some diagnostics I concluded that the drive leg was the most likely suspect.

With this in mind I spoke to A R Peachment, the very helpful Max Power UK main dealer and as they only had the CT45 spare part in stock, I opted for that. They explained that the only difference between the CT35 and the CT45 is that the 45 has two propellers; the electric motor is the same spec.

The drive leg is an oil-filled sealed unit, so once it’s broken it needs to be replaced. Complete with two propellers that added-up to just short of £500. ‘Fiddlesticks!’ I thought; that’s an unexpected expense that I could have done without on the run up to the holidays.

Over the next few days I familiarised myself with the installation instructions, and spent a few hours going through the process, but stopped short of removing the existing drive leg until I was sure I understood the challenges. As part of the dismantling and re-assembling the component parts, I found a small amount of polypropylene was wrapped around the shaft of the defunct drive leg, and I wondered whether that might have caused the failure.

Having purchased some CT1 to seal the gasket on the basis that it can cure underwater, and given that I planned on swapping the drive leg, anti-foul the tunnel, drive leg and propellers between tides …I was ready to go as soon as the tide started to fall.

Once I had freed all of the bolts, I used a wooden bung and a mallet to nudge the old drive leg free of the hull. I then headed down into the mud to sand down the tunnel before painting it with fresh antifoul and fitting the replacement part. I should have foreseen that the old gasket was likely to disintegrate, and removing it from the underside of a tunnel that’s knee-high was a lengthy, back-breaking task. Actually fitting the drive leg was easy enough, however there was no way of knowing which way to fit the part, as both shafts/propellers were identical. I reasoned optimistically that I had a 50:50 chance of getting it right.

Unfortunately while there is little technical difference between the CT35 and the CT45, there is a difference in installation. The CT35 motor has to be installed offset to the tunnel (to keep the single propeller in the centre), and the CT45 has to be centred. This meant that after converting from the 35 to the 45 configuration, the starboard propeller occasionally protruded from the tunnel by about 5mm when rotating. With this in mind I trimmed about 5mm off the propeller where this occurred. Not ideal, but repositioning the motor wasn’t an option between tides, and I will have to think long and hard about the pros and cons of centring the motor during the winter ashore.

Having reassembled all the parts and waited 24 hours for the CT1 to fully cure, I eventually tested the new drive leg. It was 100% successful… … …apart that is from the 50:50 chance of fitting the drive leg the right way …which rather inevitably turned out to be 100% wrong.

I spent further time looking at diagrams, reading the installation instructions and researching online, before I swapped the brown and blue wire leading to the control panel and that fixed the problem.

While the process took me much longer than it would have taken an engineer, an engineer’s time would probably have cost around £500, and they would probably have wanted the boat to be lifted in and out of the water to do the job, which would have cost another £500. So all in all, I guess that fixing the issue myself (while upgrading from the Max Power CT35 to the CT 45) saved around £1000.

If you’re thinking about tackling similar remedial DIY work, there was nothing technically challenging in the process, but it is important that you start as soon as the tide drops, ensure that you have all of the required components and tools …and have a plan B should things not go to plan while the tide is out.

Picnic @ Peatdraught Bay

We slipped our mooring at 3pm on Friday and set course for Port Edgar marina. We were the first of half-a-dozen yachts from our club to make it over to South Queensferry.

Although already fine, the weather improved further and we dangled our legs off the stern of our Macwester Malin as we basked in the sunshine. A few hours later the other club yachts arrived, and we subsequently spent a cheerful night crammed onboard a Moody 31.

The plan for the following day had been to anchor off Inchcolm, however this was changed at the very last-minute and instead we set off for a picnic at Peatdraught Bay, which is adjacent to Hound Point marine terminal. The shot above shows the view approaching the anchorage to our port side, and the shot below (taken seconds later) shows the view to our starboard, with our destination circled.

This was our first ever attempt at anchoring and it’s fair to say that it didn’t go according to plan. Our depth log was back at the manufacturer being repaired, and as we didn’t find out about the change of destination until after departure, I had no idea how much water was under our keels. We sought directions from a club member who was already anchored [the yacht inside the orange circle above], and inevitably our keels ended up ‘dunting’ off the rocks beneath us. The noise was starkly incongruous against the tranquility of the location. Although we were travelling at under 1 knot, the act of actually hitting something was also a first, and it unsettled us both. Having checked for water ingress, we eventually managed to lay our anchor down, however the tide and the wind were at odds, so our Malin was pointing the wrong way. After some further assistance and reassurance, we were ready to head ashore.

With half-a-dozen boats anchored there must have been at least twenty adults and children to ferry back and forth to the beach. Once there, everyone seemed to have a good time while the sun did it’s best to melt our collective cool box mountain.

The wind picked-up a little and getting back out to our yacht on our diminutive inflatable was more challenging than getting ashore. Nonetheless we made it without any mishaps and with the wind off our stern, we sailed back-up river to Capernaum Pier. There were already two or three other visiting yachts alongside when we arrived. Later that day we spent some time with them, prior to friends descending on our Macwester Malin en masse for the evening.

The following morning, we surveyed the keels and found that our up close and personal rendezvous with the rocks scraped some of the anti-foul paint off our port keel. Nothing too much to worry about I don’t suppose, but I’m looking forward to getting our depth log back up and running nonetheless.

May the Forth be with you

We managed to hit the waves for the first three weekends in a row, which must be some sort of personal best record for the start of the season. This time we made it past all two and a half of the Forth bridges and on to Aberdour (shown in the circle below, from on-board in Mortimer’s Deep). We were heading straight into an easterly, and as it was getting late in the day our sails stayed under wraps.

Getting there was good fun, but the temperature noticeably dropped from six through to our arrival at seven on Friday night. The highlight of the journey was spotting our first puffin of 2014. As usual with puffins, it scampered beneath the waves before my camera powered up.

We spent a couple of nights alongside in Aberdour’s cosy harbour, where we were the first visiting yacht of the new season (according to the ABC visitor book at least). We caught up with our Aberdour-based friends and went for walks around the village and along the coast. It was more relaxing than exciting.

Reluctantly we decided to head back to our mooring on the Sunday, as we had a few things that we wanted to achieve and we wouldn’t achieve them relaxing in Aberdour. Of course, by then the wind had veered round to the west (right on our bow) and we took the lazy/quick option of motoring back home.

Although there had been some rain on Sunday, the weather was more settled again on the bank holiday Monday, and we ticked-off a few more items on our to-do list. It was a good weekend that was over all too soon.

Shakedown encore

With poor weather forecast for the weekend, we weren’t convinced that we were going to get out on the water at all. However as we approached our Macwester Malin’s mooring on Saturday morning, we were pleasantly surprised at how calm the sea state was. The wind and rain were also much less apparent than the forecast had suggested.

After a bit of consideration, we decided to go for a second helping of Port Edgar, and set a course for South Queensferry once again. Typically we would have opted for some variation, but the reality is that we’ve become reasonably risk-averse in the wake of our over-ambitious force 8 outing (see here), and Port Edgar is both sheltered, and close-by …not to mention accessible at low water. While the east coast haar (pictured above) regularly threatened, the weather was kind to us, particularly on Saturday evening (see below).

It’s fair to say that there was a bit of a déjà vu around our stay, however we enjoyed the weekend nonetheless. On the return leg home, the problems with our genoa continued, and we had to pop our twin-keel Macwester Malin back on her drying mooring with the genoa intent on flapping around, despite being ‘furled’ with a make-shift bungee. We made further adjustments and managed to furl the sail properly, however we really will need to find a permanent solution sooner rather than later.

Sunny Shakedown Sail 2014

After a week lying alongside following crane-in, the long Easter weekend delivered a spell of fantastic weather. While the tide was out on Easter Friday, we got our sails fitted, and prepared for a shakedown sail. Once we had finished, we noticed that the new UV strip we had fitted to the head sail was the wrong way round, as we had a barber’s pole ‘striped’ effect going on. We tried a number of adjustments, but ended-up with the head sail being temporarily unusable.

As it transpired, there was no useable wind by the time we were floating later in the afternoon, so we left the sails under wrap and motored over to Port Edgar. The above image shows the ongoing construction of the Queensferry Crossing, in front of the Forth Road Bridge (grey), with the Forth Bridge (red) in the background.

We stopped off at the end of a pontoon in order to locate our spot for the night. Once we had located our berth, we headed directly up to the Chinese restaurant in South Queensferry and enjoyed a really good meal (the crew had been looking forward to freshly made Dim sum for several weeks). We were joined by friends from our sailing club back on board our Macwester Malin, Indefatigable Banks, and had a really good time catching up with them as the evening meandered on.

Fortunately, the weather was fab the next day too, and my chum from the club spent time with me having another look at the genoa. We made some adjustments which made the sail useable, but it’s going to need some further remedial work to find an optimal, permanent solution. That’s probably going to involve a power tool.

After we had hosed down the decks amongst other things, we quietly slipped out of Port Edgar and set sail for our mooring. The wind was behind us coming from the east, and as we were in no hurry, we just used our genoa to blow our 32ft Macwester back up river. It was a great feeling after such a long winter break.

This year, we’re keeping our dinghy on the front strop (previously we’ve kept our tender on the rear strops), because there’s now another boat moored behind us. We weren’t particularly keen on having a mooring off our stern as we didn’t feel there is adequate space, but our protests fell on deaf ears.

As the new arrival parked-up, a friend from the club (who was helping the new owners put their pride and joy on its mooring for the first time), described their little pocket cruiser as a “new fender to keep our yacht off the wall“. Ouch! Not sure which of us should have taken more offense, but we all realised that it was no more than a piece of light-hearted banter.

Hats off for crane-in 2014

I was really surprised that the crane driver was prepared to lift boats into the water as the wind maintained 35 to 45 knots with even faster gusts for most of crane-in weekend. All the same, we made good progress on the Saturday, however there was a bit of a roadblock in the harbour as more and more yacht owners opted not to leave the safety of the pier wall.

It was pretty blustery, and there were regular instances of hard hats being blow right off worker’s heads and straight into the harbour. Although my hard hat had straps, I still did my bit to retrieve one or two hats using a boat hook.

I also helped crew a Colvic Countess round to her mooring (shot above from onboard the Countess looking astern to a Hunter 26). It was a bit lumpy, a tad wet,  and it took three attempts to pick-up the mooring buoy, but we made it without too much fuss. Eventually work stopped early on the Saturday as there was no more room alongside.

The following day started off with lighter winds, but that didn’t last long. I had hoped to fit a new bilge pump hose in the morning, but it failed to arrive the day before and thankfully a friend from the club fashioned a temporary solution for us. Despite the high winds, we made reasonable progress and our slot was getting ever nearer.

Time was getting tight and some individuals were cutting corners, which is never a good idea when there’s heavy equipment in play. As with the day before, hard hats continued to whip off club member’s heads and into the drink. One chap decided that it would be easier to pick up a hard hat that had landed in-between his yacht and the harbour by hand …rather than fetch a boat hook. A large shout went up as inevitably the boat jostled in towards the wall, and the chap ended up in the water squeezed within a rapidly diminishing gap. Disaster was averted, and hopefully he learned a valuable lesson.

Then during one of the lifts, hydraulic fluid erupted from a hose on the crane, and crane-in ground abruptly to a halt. As the news filtered through to us, ‘the crew’ started putting away our guide ropes and fenders (see above).

Amazingly though, the crane driver drove off in the defunct crane, and returned just over an hour later with a replacement. I was impressed by his dedication and thanked him personally for returning to finish the job.

The wind was howling, and it subsequently became clear that most of the 13 yachts left were not going to be lifted that day. After consultation, it was decided that no more boats were going to be allowed out of the harbour due to the conditions, and there was only one suitable space left alongside.

As luck would have it, we were the only yacht out of the remaining 13 boats that were lifted in over the weekend. I put two control ropes on the bow and the stern to make it easier to steady our 32ft Macwester Malin in the strong westerly. The lift went without any drama.

The wind had died down substantially by the Monday and I fitted the permanent bilge pump hose. I also rowed the dinghy round to our mooring. Unfortunately, as I had been too busy talking before we left, we made it to our mooring too late to simply step off the dinghy, and I ended up dragging it over twenty metres through the mud. That was hard work; a bit like wading through …wait a minute. It was exactly like wading through mud, only I was dragging a heavy GRP dinghy along behind me.

It was pretty thirsty work, so we headed to the local for a well-earned cold one after we had tied the dinghy to our beached Hippo buoy.

The new season starts here!

Prepping for season 2014

The long wet and windy winter is drawing to a close, and over the last couple of months we’ve been doing what we can to prepare our Macwester Malin for the new sailing season. As usual, we haven’t managed to achieve all that we hoped to, however on top of the annual routine of de-winterising the engine, changing the oil, checking the engine anode (new one required next season), replacing the impeller, fitting a new impeller gasket (see above for part number), freeing-off the cockpit drains, anti-fouling and other processes, we’ve also ticked a couple of ‘bigger’ (yes, more expensive) boxes on our list.

At the end of last season we put all three of our 32ft Malin’s Quantum sails in for repairs and cleaning including replacing the UV strip on the head sail (total cost approaching £500) at the local sail loft over in Port Edgar. We’ve yet to pick them up, but the sail-maker said that our sails are high-quality sails that are still in good condition. So that’s great news.

The other ‘even bigger’ job that we decided to do over the closed season was to have stainless steel shoes fitted to the bilge keels and skeg. This was because we spotted that the keels had acquired some damage over last season (see above), and we were keen to not just repair that damage …but also prevent it from happening again this year.

The prevention aspect of the equation is why we decided to go for a stainless steel solution, rather than simply build-up new glass fibre over the damage, as I’ve occasionally spotted on some bilge keelers with encapsulated keels.

Several weeks ago my grinder and I got up close and personal with the keels. Then, when the temperature was warm enough, I repaired the holes that I’d made with epoxy, and sanded the keels and skeg down to a smooth finish.

The biggest part of the job was well beyond my limited abilities, so we had the keels manufactured and fitted professionally. That was always the plan, and the company that produced the shoes, also did all the technical stuff required to jack up our 5.5 tonne Macwester Malin to facilitate unrestricted access to the underside of the keels and skeg.

For the record, we used 5mm 316 stainless steel plate for the shoe base, with the walls slightly thinner to aid bending. We used A4 (316) stainless screws, silver CT1 as a sealant/adhesive, and we also added an additional layer of resin to the bottom of the bilge in order to be 100% sure that the screws in the skeg plate were sealed internally and externally.

It was financially painful, but undoubtedly a job worth doing properly.

This week, I’m replacing the bilge pump hose, and getting the strops attached to our Hippo buoy, which has already been re-installed. Once that’s done, we’re more or less ready for crane-in this coming weekend.

Almost there!

Party season 2013

Party season is in full swing and we’re burning our candle at both ends. You know you’ve had a good night out when you wake up the morning after, with a hazy recollection that you agreed to buy a Russian-built hydrofoil (thankfully, in this instance, subject to a few caveats).

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

As usual during the closed season, we’ve been out and about by car and on foot. Typically visiting harbours and ports up and down the Firth of Forth, often travelling back to cruising venues in a forlorn attempt to rejuvenate our memories of the summer. The shot above is the lighthouse at the entrance to Anstruther on a crisp winter’s day.

At low tide on Boxing Day, we walked out along side the Dragon’s Teeth to Crammond Island. It’s something we’ve wanted to do for years, but any time we’ve had the opportunity the tide or weather hasn’t been aligned to our plans. The image above is from Crammond Island looking over towards Crammond and the mainland. Given that the island is East of the Forth Bridge, technically the trek there and back is along the bottom of the North Sea.

Reflecting on our truncated 2013 sailing season, there’s no doubt that the highlight was spending an hour with a pod of dolphins travelling East from Elie (read more here). Next year, we’re contemplating taking our Macwester Malin through to the River Clyde on the west coast of Scotland for a few weeks, but that’s far from a done deal. We have a lot of work to cram in before crane in, and my attention is turning towards how we’re going to get everything completed by early April.

Whatever your plans for 2014, I hope that you have an enjoyable and peaceful Hogmanay and a great start to the new year.