Making the Most of a Minimal Budget. Contact me at: skintsailor@yahoo.co.uk or on Twitter: @skintsailor

Sunday 24 January 2016

A Break in the Weather

Yesterday dawned mild and misty. No wind and no clouds above the mist.

I arrived at Sprite 2 just as the last of the mist was burning off:


The new(er) battery is holding at 13.8v so it looks like the one I took off last week has finally lost capacity.

I also took my £18 spinnaker on board and hauled it up the mast. unlike the £16 main sail, the spinnaker is the right size for Sprite 2, just coming to the height of the spinnaker pole when hauled up the mast. So that's a result!

I spent the rest of the time on board with the heater on it the cabin to help dry it out a bit, having a coffee and running the engine.

All the time I was watched by a couple of young gulls. Maybe the boat was their perch and I was stopping them getting on board. Here's one stalking me:


Possibly the local fishermen have been feeding them scraps and they've learnt that humans on boats equals food, but they hung around for ages.

As you can see Jim came down as well today and took advantage of the good weather.


Nothing much else to report really, its not the season for it at the moment.

But it was good to have a gap in the weather and to get out and enjoy it.

Today I'm getting some drone flying practice in. I got a camera-equipped one from the missus for Christmas. Obviously its a bit too expensive to learn flying on, so I got a cheap sub-£20 one off ebay that arrived this week that I'm currently learning to crash..... I mean fly.

The bad news is the thing drain batteries quicker than a quick thing so the next thing to be delivered will be 6 batteries and a charger. I should get more air time and learn more quickly that way. Hopefully later this year I'll get some aerial shots of Sprite with the big 'un. Might come in handy for checking the mast top too.

2 comments:

  1. Mark,
    You are lashing out! I hope you become proficient at flying the expensive job so that we can see some good footage.
    Cheers,
    Bill.

    ReplyDelete
  2. £18 is a bit on the steep side for a skint sailor, lol. But yes, if I can just get the hand-eye co-ordination figured out I should get some interesting footage.

    ReplyDelete