No Sailing Yet.

I had an hour or so aboard Sprite on Saturday and did a couple of jobs. The bow roller lost it's bolt while I was on the deep water mooring so I stuck a small bolt in there as a stop-gap measure.

On Saturday I fitted the correct size bolt and a nyloc nut.

I ran the engine for a while too, to stop it gumming up.

I also fitted the spray hood after switching it around as it was the wrong way on the frame. I noticed some stitching has come undone on it so at some point I'm going to have to stitch it again.

That was enough to be going on with as I got there after the tide had turned.

Yesterday was pretty bad weather-wise, force 7 and raining, so I stayed home.

Today I went back and after fighting through a long queue of traffic I got to the boat.

I decided a tidy up of the cabin was in order, so the contact adhesive came out and I re-stuck the lining above the quarter berths. That allowed me to slide the table back into its storage position and freed up some space in the cabin. I got the spray bleach out and scrubbed the forward cushions which were getting a bit black. Then put all the winter items way up front out of the way. The rudder got put to one side and hooked to the side with a bungie cord.

The cabin looks a lot less cluttered and looks and smells cleaner.

The cockpit cushions went outside for an air too.

With the cabin done I turned my attention to the stays, which have been pretty slack of late. The two baby stays tightened up fine, but the two main stays tensioned all the way on the turnbuckles but were still pretty slack. I think the slump in the mast beam has taken the tension out of the stays. I really need to sort it but hopefully I'll get another season's sailing in before I have to drop the mast, dig the beam out and replace it. In the meantime I'll order a couple of shorter turnbuckles to tension the mast up for this season and hope it doesn't come through the cabin roof. :-)

Then Jim arrived, so I closed my boat up and rowed over for a natter. I did say at some point we should fit the solar panel I bought him for Christmas...

Then we rowed ashore and I had a chat with Nicky, the owner of Meagles. Hopefully she'll have Meagles in more or less sailing trim by the end of the season, although I did offer to take her out sailing at some point this summer to give her a bit of encouragement.