More charts...

This morning we spent some time working out what additional charts we will have to buy. We have already bought all the small craft folios (those are packs containing all the charts you need for a particular area and they are a lot cheaper than buying all the charts individually). Our friends Sam and Mags have very kindly offered to lend us a whole load of charts that they bought when sailing around Britain, but we still need another 12.

In the meantime Graham is preparing to see some more of our old kit on eBay. We won't get much for it but every little helps!

Good news about the windlass

We've been trying, for what seems like ages, to get Pixie booked in somewhere to get the windlass fitted. Forth time lucky, it seems everyone we've tried has been busy. Good for them, but bad for us.

So a phone around last week resulted in Carl from Endeavour Yacht Services visiting Pixie on Friday, in the midst of a short unseasonal snow shower. We got the quote back today and we have accepted it. Although I could fit the windlass myself, I'm leaving this job to the professionals. I don't really have the time or knowledge (or the bottle) to start drilling 3 inch holes in Pixie's deck.

Not only do we have seemed to have sorted that out, the engine has been serviced, but I think there may be a few other things that need sorting. The engineer was on her today so we shall see what happens.

We have the power

Well there we have it, a fully working wind charger, two days of fitting and crawling around the insides of Pixie, and we have power from the wind, and a working remote in the cockpit for the Fusion stereo.

We haven't been having a great deal of luck with our Fusion stereo to be honest. The speakers are great, the sound quality is great, and the concept of the iPod dock is fantastic. The first unit we had wouldn't tune to any fm radio station, it was returned and replaced under warranty. The second unit wouldn't switch off, and pressing the menu button would either bring up the menu, but most of the time it would do nothing or mute the stereo. While all this was happening the waterproof remote in the cockpit lost its desire to keep out water and condensation formed inside.

After a chat to Fusion, they replaced that faulty unit and the remote with the latest stereo and new remote. Unfortunately the cable for the old remote wasn't compatible with the new remote, so the nice neat wiring I'd installed back in September, had to come out and be replaced with the new wiring on the replacement remote.

Yesterday I was going to route the stereo wiring to the stereo and run the power cable from the wind charger along the same route under the cockpit. Sounded easy, but when I got the wire close to the stereo, I realised that drilling the holes wouldn't be possible because I needed a longer drill bit and I couldn't get that into the lockers which I needed to.

I started both jobs yesterday, and finished them both today. I was hoping to finish at least one last night and felt a bit disheartened that we couldn't tick more off the list yesterday, but today made up for it with two more big jobs to tick off.

Last night Kirsty and I went round to fellow Cruising Association member Mike Beck's yacht Moxie. Beer and conversation flowed until we had to make the cold icy journey along the pontoons back to a chilly Pixie. Minutes later, the heater was fired up, and she was as cosy as usual.

While I was doing the wiring over the weekend, Kirsty was busy waterproofing the spray hood, fitting a new shower head, fitting the blades on the wind charger and passing all manner of tools in my direction.

Now all I need is a weekend to recover

The woes of owning a boat

There comes a time in every yacht owners life when you hear things you really don't want to hear.

Today was one of those days.

The call came though this afternoon "Hi Graham, it's Andy from Crusader Sails" after our usualy conversation about our lives and the weather etc, came the news I really didn't want to hear, the genoa - the big flappy white sail at the front - is almost an ex sail, shuffling to the end of its mortal coil. It's had a long life, well long for a sail, short for cat, tree or car, but 1 sail year is worth about 10 human years. It has seen many places and sailed the miles, but that, is that. It could be repaired, and if we weren't off to Scotland it would probably last us a few more seasons, but we are and it probably won't.

It could be patched up, but this will cost well on the way towards the price of a new sail, so is it worth it? Who can tell?

I'd be happier with a new one, who wouldn't? But the cost came as a bit of a shock. First off, I don't want standard Dacron sail cloth. While Dacron will last longer, it will lose its shape a lot quicker. Will the loss of shape make a difference to a cruising boat? I believe the honest answer is yes. It slows the boat down, increases the healing angle, and rather that the sail holding its shape and accelerating through the gusts, the sail stretches, and the boat heals over more. The extra money for non stretchy cruising laminate sails seems a small price to pay for a sail that will hold it's shape over it's lifetime.

Without going into too much detail it's the shape of the sail that provides the power to go through the water, in much the same way that the shape of a wing keeps a plane in the air. The engines on a plane just provide forward thrust, it's the shape of the wing that lifts the plane off the ground. So the better a sail can keep it's shape, the faster ther yacht will sail.

The main sail isn't looking much better, in fact to quote Andy "it's looking a bit nasty in places" so it's out with the credit card once more....

The joys of owning a boat

A weekend off the boat, but not a weekend off

We might not have been on Pixie this weekend, but that doesn't mean there hasn't been work to do. With the cold weather of the past few months Pixie's nicely varnished tiller had started looking dejected. The tiller is a length of wood that we use to steer Pixie, it's our connection to her. With her tiller in my hand and Kirsty by my side, I'm as happy as happy can be.

But with the cold weather water ha seeped under the varnish coating on the tiller, then frozen, opening the gap wider, more water got in and froze and the whole process starts ove again. The result is a loose unsightly blister under the varnish while the water gets into the wood it turns is black. Not good.

So that was what I was doing this weekend, stripping the old varnish off and sanding down the tiller. Initially I thought the tiller was made of a golden wood like ash or oak, while it was the colour of pine, I knew it wouldn't be a softwood, even though it was the spitting image.

So it came as quite a surprise when I started removing the fittings to find the rich dark colour of teak underneath it. I then had a yellow tiller with a few dark patches and discolouration where the water had been. I started to sand back the water damage, and before long the freshly sanded wood was the colour of fresh teak. But the rest was still yellow, so it was out with the coarse sandpaper to take the whole tiller to bare, fresh wood.

As I mentioned earlier the tiller is our connection to Pixie, sanding it down seemed to strengthen the bond between us. My thoughts wandered, thinking about the place we've sailed, the weather we've had, and our future destinations. The hours drifted by until I was happy with the finish.

Sunday was spent sanding down the tiller a bit more, to get rid of any marks and to make it really smooth. After sucking off the dust with the vacuum cleaner, I started varnish it to seal the wood, and keep that pesky water out.

99 days to go...

Shamefully this is my first post on our blog. We are having a weekend off from boat maintenance so after having coffee and toast in bed I thought I would give this a go.
While Graham has been fitting batteries and fixing wiring I have been there in the background, passing tools and provide moral support. I am also chief planner and spreadsheet editor. I take great pleasure in putting a line through jobs we have completed (then adding three new ones to the list).
I am incredibly excited about heading off on our dream trip together. It's something we have talked about since we first met almost 2 years ago and now finally we get to make it a reality. The next 3 months are going to be hard work, fitting boat repairs and planning around life and work, but it's going to be worth it when we motor out of Portsmouth Harbour and turn right.

This could be expensive

Busy day today, took the mainsail and genoa (both sails for the boat) to Crusader Sails, a lot of discussion and chin scratching followed. It's not looking great for the headsail, everything has to die one day, I'm just hoping that the genoa will last another season, but bearing in mind the trip we have planned, we might not be able to put it off having to buy another one. Of course it won't be cheap.

On the way back I picked up the 2.5hp outboard from Warsash Marine. Then it was off to Pixie.

Thanks to the joys of the M25 this morning, I was running about an hour later than planned, that will teach me to get up early to brave the traffic!

Next, Mark from Gosport Boatyard came over and we had a good chat about the fitting the windlass, getting the engine serviced and the crack on the bow roller. Mark said the crack had probably been there a while and that if we were doing a lot of channel crossings, it would be a good idea to get it sorted. So we're getting a quote for that as well.

Fitting the windlass won't quite be as easy as I hoped, which was why I wanted to get it fitted professionally. They have done this before, I haven't.

We're going for the slightly big and very shiny Lewmar V2 with a drum on top. The drum will enable Kirsty to haul me up the mast, or out of the water if I go over the side, if she wants to that is!

I also took the opportunity to clean the engine bay. What fun. Last year I bought some magical only drink oil white cloths that sits dormant under the engine and absorbs any oil which it finds, but - and this is the clever bit- is leaves the water. I'm happy to report it works a treat. Removing the oily pad left behind clear (ish) water that was easy to mop up.

Power to the Pixie

One of the things about living on board a boat is power management, managing power so when you want it you've got it, and when you don't want it you still have lots.

At the moment we have one engine battery and one house battery. The plan is to fit a second house battery to give us more power for living.

Unfortunately the space on Pixie that's devoted for batteries isn't big enough for three batteries, so I'm having to fit the engine battery somewhere else in the boat.

Deciding where to move the engine battery was the source of much head scratching this afternoon. In the end the cockpit locker became the lucky host, so after a quick trip to the friendly timber merchant, I had the wood I needed.

As is always the case on boats, I realised where I wanted to fit it, would mean I couldn't access the fuel cut off, so I had to fit the battery in a slightly different position. So there I was crammed into a cockpit locker trying to fit the support for the battery where my feet were, while sitting on the handle of hull fitting, as the contents of the locker kept falling down on me! It all got a bit much on occasions, but it's done now, I just have to wire it up.

While I've been typing this up Kirsty has been cooking sausage and mash, it's now ready so I shall bid you good night, we're entertaining tonight.

Little red lights

Look a little red light! There! In the picture!



OK it might not be a great photo, or your predilection for little red lights might not get you jumping with glee when you see them. But that little fella (or fellaess) in the photo means that I've installed the VSR correctly. For those of you that are familiar with electronic acronyms. Let me explain.

On Pixie we have two set of batteries, one set of house batteries, for running the day to day stuff, like instruments, lights, water pumps etc. and the second battery is for starting the engine. Because we need an engine, which as well as propelling the boat it also charges both sets of batteries, we have that battery on a separate system so we should always have enough power in the battery to start the engine.

So why am I getting excited about a little red light? I'm coming to that. The VSR stands for Voltage Sensitive Relay, but that not really important. If I could explain what it means I'd try, all I know is that behind those grey plastic bits something clever is going on.

What the VSR does, is to take the charge from the engine, and recharge the engine battery first. When the engine battery has reached full, the VSR then stops charging that battery and charges the main house batteries instead. The little red light is telling the world (well me, and I'm telling you) that the engine battery is charged and sitting pretty at 13.7 volts.

To be honest the instructions that came with the VSR were poor, very poor, so poor it didn't mention the little red light at all, poor thing. It was only by having a chat to the nice people at Merlin Electronics that I got to find out what I should have wired where. So I went back and wired what I should, and then when I saw it, the little red light!

Well it made me happy at least

Looking forward to the summer

There are certain things I'll miss on the trip, unlimited electricity and water and a stationary home. Other things like being stuck in traffic on the M25, I'll happily leave to every one else

- Posted while on the move...I wish