A windy weekend

Toucando had the first weekend of September off.  The following week the winds began in earnest, said to be the tail end of Hurricane Katia.  I got a call from the marina saying, "Please ring as SOON as possible!"  That sounded alarming.  The news was that the jib had partially unfurled and was flapping uncontrollably.  To cut the story short, Alan from the marina went out in the launch, got the damaged sail down and lashed it to the deck.  We're not sure quite how much wind there was... Sotonmet said gusts of 195 (which is not believable).  Other sources said 50 to 60 knots.  It was certainly very strong.

I went down to Southampton on Friday not knowing what the jib would look like.  It turned out to have an L-shaped rip maybe about two feet in each direction.  The sail was taken ashore and I got the boat ready for the weekend crew: Michele and Sarah P.  It remained windy and the forecast was mentioning everything between Force 4 and 8 for the weekend.  We had venison goulash aboard on Friday evening and agreed to set off on Saturday. We decided to take the cautious approach and stay fairly local.  Plan A had been to go to Chichester Harbour with Southampton Sailing Club, but they had decided against it on the basis of the forecast.  We decided to go and do a bit of sailing in Southampton Water and see what it was like.  To begin we had some practice handling Toucando under power and a bit of a tour of the docks.  We then decided to head for Hamble where we stayed at Port Hamble Marina.  We took a walk into the village and enjoyed a drink or two at the Bugle, before returning to Toucando for pirate stew.

On Sunday it seemed fairly calm at first.  We made a reasonably early start, motoring up river to begin, then turning and raising the mainsail with two reefs.  We sailed out into Southampton Water.  The wind was very variable... never much less than a four and often gusting well into force six and seven.  We had a good and fast sail up towards Weston where we practised tacking and heaving to, gradually polishing our technique. Eventually we turned for the Itchen and went back to Toucando's mooring.  There was a strong westerly wind blowing us on to the pontoon which made sorting out all the fenders a little tricky, but we got it all done before having a late lunch.  Thanks to Michele and Sarah for their help.

Once the crew had gone I drove (the car) to Lee on Solent for a walk along the beach.  It was a bright, sunny afternoon, but the winds were strong, and all the waves had white tops. There were plenty of walkers, fishermen, kite fliers, wind surfers etc., but I only counted two sailing boats, both well reefed, on the Solent.  On Monday I took the jib to the sail maker... and was pleased to discover that it is repairable.  The sail will now get a wash and full service.  I am hoping that we will get a few good weekends before long... it's time the hurricane season was over.

Here are three pictures from the weekend (courtesy of Michele):

Toucando goes to Cowes and gets a wash, and then has an outing to Beaulieu

After less than four months in the Solent Toucando badly needed a wash.  When the water was clear enough weed could be seen growing on her propeller.  The cooling water inlet seemed to be getting blocked (as mentioned in earlier posts) and a scummy line was developing on the side of her hull.  So a crew was assembled and a lift and wash was booked.

We had originally planned to go on Thursday, but near gales were forecast, so we deferred until Friday.  Andrew and Michele took Toucando round to Hamble Point on Thursday evening to get a head start for the trip over the Solent.  When Friday came it was quite breezy.  We came out of the Hamble River to see thousands of boats taking part in Cowes Week racing.  We crossed the water on a broad reach taking advantage of a gap between two separate races.  We crossed the finishing line at 1200: shame we weren't in a race.  We then wove our way (somewhat anxiously) through hundreds of small sailing boats whizzing about in the Medina River entrance.  We got in without incident.  We made our way to Sealift and moored up on the waiting pontoon.

Sealift is a platform which can be sunk to the river bed, and then brought up to enable work to be done on the hull.  It uses submarine type technology with four large tanks which can be filled with water to sink, or air to rise.  We manouevred Toucando into position and then slowly we were lifted out.  Once fully out of the water the three Sealift staff got to work with jet washes.  Toucando's hull was covered with black slime, weed and various crustacea.  Andrew went to a nearby chandlery to get some anodes (sacrificial metal blocks to prevent corrosion of more important things).  It took the best part of two hours for the job to be completed, but Toucando looked a lot better for it.  When it was all finished the platform was lowered and we motored off.  We then had a bit of excitment, almost going agound in the very busy river as boats came back from their races.  Andrew exchanged a wave with Sir Robin Knox-Johnston (the first person to sail all the way round the world, non-stop, single handed... back in the '60s) who was driving a rib with a large party of young children aboard.  I am sure he was impressed with Toucando.  We returned to the Sealift waiting pontoon to have lunch before heading back to Southampton in the afternoon/early evening.

Waiting for the Sealift to be lowered before we could go in

Andrew on the deck as Toucando is slowly lifted out of the water

 Getting started with the jet wash

The propeller before...

... and after

A nice clean hull!

On Saturday Toucando was joined by Ben, Daryl and Nik (former colleagues of Andrew) for a daysail.  We decided to go to Beaulieu.  As we left the mooring we followed Tom and Ros Cunliffe out of the Itchen on their new boat, a 23 year old American cutter, which had just arrived from Florida on the back of a ship.  They were going on their shakedown trip to make sujre everything worked.

Tom Cunliffe and family taking out their newly acquired American cutter (left)

 We got our sails up and had a nice easy sail down Southampton Water.  When we got out to the Solent proper the wind picked up and we tacked down to the Baulieu River entrance.  We motored up the river where we were greeted by Lord Montague's henchmen (aka the Beaulieu River Harbourmaster)... they didn't have a pontoon for us to moor on, but suggested we moor on a buoy.  To our great delight they didn't ask for any money.  Phew!  We had lunch there before returning.

Buckler's Hard on the Beaulieu River

Nik, Ben and Darryl contemplating lunch

By this stage it was pretty windy, so we put a couple of reefs in the main and we had a fairly fast sail back, returning to our mooring just before sunset.  We then enjoyed cups of tea (sic.) sitting on the cockpit, watching the life of the river, human and animal.

Toucando seemed to have benefitted from the wash.  She sailed beautifully, and the engine was perfect. Thanks to Michele for her help over the whole three days, and Ben, Daryl and Nik for the Beaulieu trip.

Ben and Nik flaking the sail