Hidden Gem

With a month to go now to the Americas Cup World Series event here in Portsmouth I thought I'd start trawling t'internet to find related sites so I can collate them into my sidebar.

I've had a link the Ben Ainslie Racing since last year and the Portsmouth News (not the richest newspaper) has just launched an Americas Cup specific website as well.

I thought I'd have a look at what the BBC are getting up to now the days are really counting down to the Americas Cup.

Well if you go to the BBC News website and then select the Sport option from the bar at the top of the page, you get plenty of sports news. You can then click on "All Sports" on the left hand side of the sport selection bar and you supposedly get a list of all the sports covered by the BBC. You'd be forgiven for thinking that they don't cover sailing at all because it simply isn't listed in their list of sports. Bad form from the BBC considering they're covering the ACWS next month with coverage of the race highlights.

Yet a Google search will allow you to jump into BBC sailing related articles, all with a \sport\sailing domain.

So, if you really dig and search for it, eventually you get the BBC Sport Sailing page:

From that you can jump off to the page for BBC radio Solent's H2O Show, which contains a number of podcasts from the H2O show. All pretty relevant for me as it's a local station, but it's a gem of a page, with articles on local events like the old gaffer's festival. You can download them to MP3 for listening in the car or on the boat. Very handy for those with an interest in sailing.

The sad thing is that the BBC haven't yet got anything specific going on with their web pages regarding the ACWS race. Time's tight and it would be nice if the UK's national broadcaster had something on its pages dedicated to this major sailing event.

Mast Rigging

Yesterday (Tuesday) was my second day off work and I spend a couple of hours on Sprite sorting out my bent mast.

I noticed a couple of days ago that the top of the mast had a distinct curve to port after I changed the rigging turnbuckles, so I set to straightening it. I removed the boom so I could lie on the cabin roof and look up the mast. Not the easiest or comfiest thing to do, scampering off the cabin, into the dinghy and then adjusting the turnbuckles.

I got it straight and then had a coffee.

While i had my coffee I watched a couple of what looked like lecturers were on top of the Portsmouth Uni buildings with a video camera taking video of the harbour and the beach (including wrecks) below the Uni buildings:

Anyway after refitting the boom I thought I'd take a picture of the straight mast to show off my prowess at rigging. This is the picture:

As you can see there's a bend at the top to starboard. Looks like I'd over-done the adjustment. Mind you it is the first time I've adjusted a mast, so I had no idea how far the mast would move due to adjustment of the turnbuckles.

Anyway, the lightbulb came on, because if I could see the bend by just taking a picture on my mobile, it saves me lying down on the deck, removing the mast etc.

So that's what I did: do half turns on the turnbuckles and take a picture to see the results. It seems only small adjustments were needed, a lot smaller than I anticipated. After a couple of pics the mast was as straight as I could get it:

It might need a slight tweak in future: those spreaders look a bit odd and its not quite perfectly straight, but not bad for a first try!

And that was my Tuesday on the boat done apart from wiring the rigging to stop it coming undone again.

Windy Wednesday

I had planned to do a shakedown sail this evening after work, as the tide was timed right and the weather had been fine for the past couple of days.

Then this morning the shipping forecast mentioned gales. Great. I don't really want to push the newly-tensioned rigging through anything extreme on a shakedown run so sailing was off the schedule.

I still persevered and even though it was blowing force 6 I rowed out to Sprite for a brew and a quick check over of a few things. Force 6 in the dinghy doesn't really faze me now after rowing out in a similar gale when Sprite was on the deep water mooring.

I checked my re-glued locker top and the rigging from the weekend. I can now adjust the mast because above the baby stays it has a slight kink in it. I also ran the outboard with some Redex in the petrol as it was not sounding right last weekend. Probably a bit gummed up from not being run.

I brewed a cuppa and came off the boat as the Wednesday night club from ECC were running up and down the harbour entrance which gave me some entertainment. Even the big boats were finding the wind a bit strong:Through the entrance to the harbour where it was more sheltered from the wind the y were upright, but once they had got clear and entered the harbour proper, they went over as the wind caught them.

A couple of boats went out of the harbour with heavily reefed sails. Brave souls!

There were a couple of strays at Eastney too, probably blown off course:

Then Jim and his other half turned up, they'd just been to the chippy and had come down to check on the boats and have dinner.

This weekend I want to put Sprite on the beach at low tide and scrub off the bottom, ready for next month's week-long cruise. The weather looks wet but I have a tarpaulin I can put over the cockpit to keep things dry. I also have a decent waterproof coat. I've ordered some oxalic acid crystals off ebay so I can have a bash at removing the water staining on the hull. There's some rust stains on the transom that could do with being removed too.

Morning high tide on Saturday is 09:16 (4.4m), the low is at 14:47 and the late high is at 21:53 (4.7m). Hopefully I can stick her on the beach two hours after the high and float off two hours before the next high.

First Sail: Video.

Here's a short video of me and Jim sailing Sprite 2 in Langstone harbour. We had an hour sailing up the harbour and back in mist and light winds. The engine worked, the rig worked and the light wind we had was just right for trying stuff out.

The little wind we had shows she sails quite reasonably. The occasional gust we had made her pick up and scoot along quite well.

I'm actually quite impressed.

Now to sort out somewhere for all the rope to go, because it was getting on my nerves continually being sat on!

Here are some more pictures of the historic event:

The sails work quite well. 3 knots when the wind picked up a little.

Not much wind at this point as evidenced by the lack of wake.

Jim posing at the front of the boat. lol.

All in all its been 9 months since I took ownership if Sprite 2, but really 2 of those were abandoned due to the storms, so in reality its taken 7 months of work to get to the point I can sail her. To keep costs down its been slow but steady progress. Now everything works as it should I can concentrate on the less major jobs.

The main priority is to source a depth sounder, as I'm paranoid about running aground. Especially in Langstone where the bottom is very close to the surface. Its a hard task finding a cheap one on eBay. It looks like the transducers already on Sprite are for a NASA instrument, probably a Clipper Duet, but Duets get quite (very) expensive. I might try and get a different depth sounder that's compatible with the NASA transducers rather than get a Clipper Duet. I can save money by ditching the speed log as my phone's GPS function can tell me that.

As it was I used my phone's chartplotter app to keep to the deep water channel rather than use real under the keel depth data.

Locker tops come a close second as priorities. Then I'm thinking of resealing all the deck fittings as it gets warmer.

All I can say is thank you to Sprite 2's previous owner Pam for letting me have her and I hope she still watches this blog and is happy that Sprite 2 is now back sailing again.

I've already dug out the tiller pilot that Pam gave me just after I got Sprite 2. There's a problem with the wiring to it. The tiller pilot works OK on a power supply at home, but plug it into the socket in Sprite's cockpit and it sits there forlornly with dim lights. I suspect corroded wiring reducing the amount of current to the tiller pilot. It needs a LOT of current to work properly! Hopefully it won't take months to fix like the charging circuit, as I have wire now!

First Sail

I've sailed Sprite 2 properly today for the first time.. not a lot of wind, but enough of it for an hour in the harbour. What a great day. Pictures and video to follow as I'm not home yet.