The last week has seen me struggling with marine toilets again. It seems that these beasts never work properly. Everyone seems to have a similar solution to maintenance but none of the methods work. Pour oil in them, use vinegar. Yes buckets and buckets of vinegar. The amount of vinegar required to keep them from blocking up would sink the boat and bankrupt me. At the end of the day you have no choice but to strip out all the plumbing pipes and clean each piece individually. It is a disgusting job. And this little exercise has to be done about once a month. So today, yet again, I hate living the “dream”, and living on a boat.
08 Aug. 12
We volunteered ourselves some time ago to be the bridge boat during a sailing regatta. Now the weekend has come and we have to get involved. Being the lazy ass people that we are we no longer want to be involved and would rather just do nothing. So yesterday whilst walking past the office I was asked how much anchor chain we have on board. In my mind I hoped that not having enough chain would be our saviour and thus we could avoid being involved. I converted my reply into a question and asked how much chain we needed? The answer came as fifty metres. Yes! I replied in jubilation, we only have about thirty metres so could just continue in our quest for laziness. No, came the answer, the club would provide the fifty meters of chain. So, it appears we will be the bridge boat for the weekend after all.
15 Aug. 12
The club never provided that chain and I found myself starting to panic. After I realised that there was no way they were going to let me worm my way out of the regatta, I decided to do some research. For the last few regatta’s they used another cat named Nomad. She is fifty four foot long. Steve Martin, the Commodore, told me that she had dragged her anchor and they had to add extra warp. I went around and asked everybody that was anybody about the anchor of the last bridge boat, but nobody seemed to know. I needed to know how heavy the anchor was compared to our anchor. I eventually found the owner of Nomad and asked him, thinking he would be able to enlighten me. To my surprise the answer came as, “I don’t know, is that important to you?” I then asked him how they made up their bridle. He replied, “What bridle?” “We just tie a piece of rope around the mast.”
Thursday morning arrived and we found ourselves at the race briefing feeling a bit unprepared. To add to my misery, Rauen, my reliable crew, was flying up to Joey’s to see his dad in the afternoon. This would mean that Lola and Kyle, the rest of my crew, would be at the airport to say goodbye when the race was on. My mind was filled with trepidation as I listened to the race committee announce that we should be getting out in about an hour. Walking back to the boat I had visions of myself as a lonely solo sailor on a badly anchored boat drifting slowly towards the rocks and death.
Fortunately one of the race competitors called and informed us that he was stuck in the snow on his way down from Joey’s. Some of the others also experienced problems so the race was postponed to Friday and I went off to the airport to say goodbye.
Friday morning with two race officials and minus one crew member we motored out of the harbour to test the conditions for the day. After spending an hour drifting about in the same spot I opened the furler and we sailed at about one knot for the next hour. Another hour of waiting and testing and the decision was made to race inside the harbour instead so we motored back to our parking.
The wind finally arrived on Saturday morning and we dropped our anchor in twenty five metres of ocean. Lola gave me clear and concise instruction that she wasn’t accepting the rope around the mast bit so I had to make up our bridle and make it work. Fortunately I am a very talented man and made it happen as per instruction, thus saving my own life and making sure that future Barry would still be in existence.
Sitting out at anchor about three miles offshore watching Hobie Cat racing was quite an experience and we all enjoyed the day.
The racing finished as the wind turned north easterly and picked up to above twenty knots. It fascinates me how quickly the sea follows the change in the wind, within minutes the waves had become short, steep and choppy. Now the fun begins. Lola and I agreed before the time that we won’t fight this time and I ask her to steer us towards the anchor. Steve and I head onto the deck to quickly lift the anchor. Well, at this point I was to discover that my fears of the anchor dragging were all in my head and about to be obliterated. More than an hour later, after some blood, lots of sweat and even a few tears Steve and I finally managed to get the anchor back on board. I was so busy struggling that I couldn’t even find the time to fight with Lola.
With only a few weeks left of winter, Lola and I decided to stop being lazy and start preparing Yrumoar for our upcoming journey. We searched all over the boat for the list of repairs we made but it must have grown some feet and disappeared. After abandoning our search for the list we decided to make a new list. The new list has fifty three items that need to be addressed. Some of the items are big jobs, but most are quite small. On the first day we ticked two items off the list. Today we added one to the list.
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