Struggling

Just sitting in the house. We never seem to have any free time. There is always a huge list of things to do. Every penny that comes in has to be carefully assigned to pay for some more work to be done. Will we be able to afford to do the conservatory this year, now that the attic, garage and bathroom are done? Should we pay as much as we can off the mortgage whilst the rates are so low, and leave spending on the house until we've paid it off?

Meanwhile, we want to go diving. We want to go sailing. We want to go away in the van, drink wine, eat good food, enjoy ourselves. We knew it was going to be hard. We're approaching the halfway point in our plans to move to West Wales, and everything is according to budget, and going really well.

Then our friend Tom visits, from the Phillippines. It was Tom that first got us interested in sailing, and, with whom, we got our first taste of what it could be like, crusing from Italy to the Greek islands in his 44ft ketch 'Perky Puffin' in 2007:

Here was a boat that we could live on. Long term. Here was a boat that we could travel on, cheaply. I've always wanted to dive in the Pacific. Rangiroa is near the top of my list. There are so many places we want to travel to, Galapagos, South Africa, back to Sudan, and, it keeps calling me, the Pacific.

Through Tom, we met John, from Tenby. John bought a boat in America, Chelone, and sailed her back across the North Atlantic:

The next year, John sailed down through Portugal, Morocco, the Azores, across the Caribbean, past beautiful islands where we ourselves have since cruised and dived, and then back to the UK. We often pop down to Tenby to visit John - he dives, too.

Then there are Brian and Sue, on their 33ft yacht, 'Blue Bear'. They left Cardiff in October 2010, sailed  the same way as John, but then went through the Panama canal and out into the Pacific. They are currently headed for Fiji.

These are not dreams. These are not adventures one reads about in magazines. These are friends of ours.

We need a boat, a scuba compressor and some time. We have three or four years to finish messing about with houses, and then we may be able to have those things.

Meanwhile, we work, and read about others who do. We plan, and talk. It's hard, and we're struggling.

I read this, earlier today:

"We shared meals ashore and on our boat in the Marshall Islands, drank kava with groups on several islands in Fiji, played with children, sang with locals, taught school children in Indonesia, picnicked with locals in the Cook Islands,  learned how to collect shellfish and prepare them the local way  in Kiribati, traded clothes for local produce in Guadalcanal, sponsored a model outrigger canoe race in the Louisiades, and repaired a solar power system and other equipment in Tikopia. We took locals aboard from several islands for overnight fishing trips, to visit their ancestral atoll in New Caledonia, took a family for two weeks to a Melanesian Arts Festival in Vanuatu and slept on crowded ferryboat decks on the Irrawaddy River in Burma"

http://www.arctracer.com/

The countdown is well underway.

Our other hobby.......

Messing about in Ishtar's dirty, oily, smelly passages, covered in diesel, trying to work out why an almost brand new engine keeps cutting out.

Louise wanted to do it. Good. If something were to happen to me, and I became incapacitated, a basic understanding of the engine, and it's subsystems would be invaluable to her. She removed the top of the diesel tank, after removing everything from the cockpit locker and crawling in. We both expected a tank full of diesel bug, and were a bit lost when repeated syphoning and scraping the bottom of the tank produced only clean, white diesel. Not one globular black lump in sight.

Curious.

Louise next removed the main rubber fuel hose that leads from the tank to the primary fuel filter and blew down it. A lot of resistance. Not blocked, but almost. Finally, a blob of rubber hose came out the other end.

There were more lumps in the filter. When she crawled out of the cockpit locker, fuel pipe in hand, things began to make sense.



This pipe was renewed in January, just over 3 months ago. It was soft and sticky, and clearly breaking up. Louise had bought it at a motor factors - it was not marked as 'marine grade'. I don't know what caused it to perish like that, salt, damp, or the diesel itself, but we'd found the problem, and learned another lesson. Buy marine grade fuel hose. A small section of hose connected to the engine, that had been in place for 16 months was still solid, and looked like new. On it's side was stamped 'Marine grade'.

Ho hum. You live and learn.

We spent the rest of the day doing odd jobs - the ones you never do, 'cos they won't take long, but we'd rather go for a sail. That evening it started raining, and the wind picked up. The sound of the wind and rain against Ishtar's hull is lovely when you are tucked up warm inside, on a quiet safe mooring.

In the morning it was still pouring down, and we got soaked as we used the dinghy to go ashore where we'd arranged a lift home from my father.

An enjoyable weekend. Spolied a little by breaking down again, but, I guess, that is par for the course when you mess about in boats.

Our course, this weekend:

A brief visit to Portishead

So, were we ready? No. You never are. There's always more to do, but enough was enough. It would have to wait.

We arrived at the boat late on Friday afternoon. Everyone else was the same as us. Carrying bags and boxes out to their own boats. I took Tigger for a walk. There are some tall reeds at the club, over 6ft high. Herons hunt at the water's edge, and the occasional mink is to be seen. Tigger loves hunting for sticks in the reeds, bouncing about, with the occasional meerkat impression.

As darkness approached, we wandered across to Mermaid Quay. Harry Ramsden's fish and chips went down well sitting on the wharf, where you can moor your boat via a Pay and Display system to visit the shops and restaurants.

I often wonder about the sailing ships and steamers of past centuries, and the men that worked and sweated so hard, loading the coal, and unloading other goods - the original purpose of the docks. I wonder what it was really like to sit here in 1912, where I now enjoy my fish and chips. More interesting, what would one of those men think if they could see the Bay now?

Anyway. Back to the club, and into the bar for a few beers in good company. Seems everyone was looking forward to the trip.

Saturday morning. Louise wanted to get some fresh rolls for lunch, and I just waited. Low tide was around 14:30, and, since we were headed up Channel, it made sense to wait for the flood to take us to Portishead. In the end, we locked out just before low tide, with a crowd of other yachts, 16 in all, making the trip from our club.

Louise got the sails up very quickly, and the noise of the engine was soon forgotten in the warm hazy sunshine. The wind was from ahead, so we lazily tacked back and forth for the next hour or two, gradually separating away from the other boats as we all moved at slightly different speeds and in different directions.

To call it a gentle sail doesn't do it justice. Drifting with the tide, sailing at perhaps one or two knots more than the water was moving, even the peaceful lapping of the water against Ishtar's hull seemed quiet.

I'd promised Louise that I'd just let her sail the boat. She wanted to do the whole thing from start to finish as if I wasn't there. So Tigger and I made some tea, some Ciabbatta rolls with hummus, took some pictures and did some reading. We passed a couple of larger vessels at anchor, their vibrant colours a contrast to the whites of the yachts.

As the afternoon slipped by, you just knew a wonderful sunset was coming. It didn't disappoint, as we passed Clevedon and approached Portishead.

All this peace was all too soon over, however. The good weather had brought out dozens of boats from Portishead marina. add yachts from Cardiff, and the locks were working flat out, filling and emptying every half hour, chock full each time until we were all in.

Tie up. Engine off. Open a beer. Nice.

We joined our friends Sheila and Vince aboard their yacht for our customary curry. A couple of glasses of wine and an axcellent home baked cake, courtesy of sheila, and then to the pub, where we joined all the other crews, in differing states of inebriation, depending on whether they'd eaten aboard their boats, or gone straight there after the lock.

Everybody had anjoyed the day, smiles all around.





Is it worth it?

Once the maintenance is done, the real panic starts. Do we have everything on the boat? Is there food, diesel, water? Is there bedding? Are the clothes still there? Louise was going to skipper the first weekend trip, so she was worried about her passage plan, too. Which way was the best way? What time to set off? What time were the locks at Portishead operational etc etc....

So much hard work on the boat, and then so much hard work getting everything ready. It's easy to see why some people give it up after a season or two.

Then, a few hours into the trip, you see something like this:

There you are, relaxing on a yacht, the warm spring breeze sighing gently as it breathes you towards your destination, your friends doing the same on their boats. You imagine people stuck in traffic, or queueing in supermarkets, watching junk on the tv, and you sit back and smile. All is good.

All is good.

Of course it's worth it.

Spring

We've not sailed for over a month. Off up to Portishead this morning on a club outing. Should be fun. There's rumoured to be around 15 boats making their way the 20 or so miles up the channel to Portishead marina. A night at Portishead yacht club to follow promises a few beers too.

Pictures to follow.

Winter sailing, rugby and beer

Ishtar is having a new UV strip fitted to her genoa - it's needed doing since we were caught out in bad weather in June last year. The sailmaker said it would take a week, and he's now had it for two, hopefully it will be back this week.

Our friend Vince wated to go for a sail, to play with his spinnaker, and there was rugby in the bar afterwards, Wales v Scotland from Murrayfield no less. The weather looked decent for Saturday, a ridge of high pressure was forecast between strong winds on Friday and a gale late on Saturday night. Vince asked if I fancied a sail, and I jumped at the chance.

We locked out at 11:30, a few other brave sailors and a few more fishermen were in the lock with us. The fishermen, no doubt, intent on luring the year's last few cod onto their decks.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Leaving Cardiff locks"][/caption]

I helmed as we navigated the dredged channels leaving Cardiff, the dredger 'Sospan dau' waited for us to clear before continuing her work:

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Dredger"][/caption]

Vince put the kettle on and enquired as to whether I fancied just going for a sail up towards Newport with the last of the flood, returning later with the ebb in time for the game. Perfect! We put the sails up and settled into a nice easy beam reach, enjoying the winter sunshine, tea and good company.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Vince making tea"][/caption]

 I spotted something in the water, it looked like a balloon with an attached messsage. Who knows where it came from? It turned out that it was probably Cardiff - it was a valentine's balloon. Vince let it go and instead of returning to the sea it sailed up and away into the blue sky.

 

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Sky"][/caption]

The wind strengthened and a slight chop picked up as the tide started to ebb, against the wind. We turned for home, but the wind had backed, and what should have been another beam reach had turned into a beat. As the first spots of spray splashed into the cockpit I regretted not brining my full sailing gear, but we didn't get any wetter, despite the 23 knots of wind.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Beating back towards Cardiff."][/caption]

 

Another yacht from the club was shadowing us, but we passed her, Vince's racing experience telling him when best to tack.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Tacking"][/caption]

 

It is, of course, still February, and the chill wind did start to have an effect as the sun dipped. No problem, we were soon locking in and tying up. Before long we were in the bar, with a few friends, watching the rugby (Wales won 24-6) and enjoying a few beers.

Thanks, Vince, a thoroughly enjoyable day.

Three men in a boat

Beautiful sunny day. Crisp clear air, with a cold Easterly blowing from the NorthEast. The promise of rugby in the club bar to follow, with beer and warmth.

Vince and I joined Allan. aboard his beautiful Westerly 33, Chausey. Thermals on, kettle on, we left the pontoon and headed for the barrage. It just lifts you to be sailing, even as we crossed the bay, the smiles started.



We locked out with another club boat, Rhiannon, whose captain and crew also seemed buoyed by the great winter sun.





We were asked to avoid the dredger working in the outer harbour. She was tightly squeezed in, and we saw her later, heading out into the channel to dispose of the ever present Cardiff mud.




as soon as we passed the Outer Wrach buoy we raised sail and headed NorthEast. Chausey eased over and was soon zipping through the water with the remains of the flood. We chatted and laughed.

From a boat out in the channel, you cam look across at Cardiff. A beautiful city with a recognisable skyline. Rather be out here though, than packed into the shops.




We had planned to head towards Newport, but were enjoying ourselves so much that we went South of the Welsh grounds and headed across towards teh English grounds. I helmed, Chausey easily controlled by her wheel in the flat sea. We felt the tide turn and knew we would need to head back soon if we were to avoid low water at the barrage.

Light winds, so Allan readied the crusing chute.





The wind dying all the while it was good that the tide ebbed out of the channel, draing us back towards Cardiff. The dredger left the harbour as Allan served up some delicious warming pea soup:





All too soon we were back at the barrage and, not long after, tied up on the pontoon. Into the bar for some well earned beer.



Winter sailing. Can't beat it. can you?

New Year's Day Sail

The plan for the New Year sail was for Ishtar to have an all ladies crew, so Sheila, Angie and Elaine were welcomed aboard.  It was a beautiful morning although very cold, it was really hazardous on deck as it was very icy so you had to hang on while moving around.  We left the pontoon with a group of other yachts and made our way to the locks.  It was a bit of a squeeze in there but we got in.

 Once out, we raised our sails and began to goosewing towards Flatholm.

Once we got closer to the island some of the others decided to go around Steepholm too, but we decided to stick with the original plan.  Warmed up with some of Sheila's delicious curried parsnip soup we were a happy crew.

Galipette sailed past us looking well trimmed.

It was a good result for us, as we enjoyed a bit of peace and quiet away from our men folk, so we flew the pink flag with pride!

Vince and Tim on Alana were waiting for us so we could all lock in together.

Coracle and Chaussey were soon following us, with the slowly setting sun, having been around the two islands.

It was a good day for the ladies as we had achieved what we wanted, every trip out without the "support" of our men means we become better at planning, sail setting and making decisions.  We all felt a bit more confident and there were smiles all round.  An excellent start to the year.

Two autumn sails

October. The week before the clocks go back. On Thursday I popped down to the club with a vague idea of sailing for an hour or so. Allan and Vince from CYC were there and fancied it too. We locked out at 13:30 with no particular intention.







Pretty soon we were heading South East past the Cardiff grounds, all smiling. It was sunny, dry, and Ishtar was bowling along nicely under the breeze. This was better than expected.





I've always loved late afternoon skies in the autumn. Today's were no exception





And storms over Devon



On and on we sailed. None of us wanted to turn back, even when it became clear that it would soon be dark. It was such good sailing, and good fun. Eventually, the turning tide started to work against us and we turned tail and headed back East, passing Barry and Sully once more.



Darkness fell and we put the lights on. We sailed on, up past Penarth, a tug swept by in the black. We entered the Wrach channel. Called the barrage and they kindly offered to open the lock for us 15 minutes early. In we went.





We tied up and switched the engine off just after 20:30. All agreed that we must do this again.



The following morning, Louise was keen to get out. We'd bought a second hand cruising chute on the web, so I took it, knowing that the winds would be too strong.

Louise wanted to try and sail around Flatholm. We locked out and she chose a great line, squeezing past the Southern edge of Cardiff grounds. Another yacht had follwed us, from the lock, heading the same way.



A couple of tacks, and we were rounding Flatholm. As we passed the Southern tip, the wind dropped off until we were crawling along at 2 knots.



Allan called on the radio. He'd just locked out on Chausey, and would meet us west of Flatholm.

I'd forgotten about our 'new' cruising chute, but remembered and dashed below to fetch it. I didn't really know what I was doing, but up it went, and looked great!

Louise helmed, as we headed down towards Allan and Chausey in the Southwest.

Tigger and I, meanwhile, were working hard running the boat.



Allan appeared out of the gloom and shot past us, taking pictures. It was lovely sailing, again, but we decided to turn back before dark this time.





As Chausey approached, Tigger became nervous. Was Lilly aboard? Their last meeting had left Tigger shaking with fear. He is not the world's most courageous dog. Luckily, this time Lilly was elsewhere, so Tigger barked at Allan, bravely.

It was not long after low, but Louise took us in through the Wrach channel.

With gales forecast and the clocks going back this weekend, it may be a while before we get out again. We did pass 1500 miles for the year though, which we are very pleased with.

Flatholm and back, with spinnaker

The nights are drawing in, and everywhere you go there are signs of winter. Dale yacht club are having a 'laying up party' this weekend to mark the end of the summer, and the compound at Cardiff yacht club is fully booked.

Pointless sailing on this late in the season then.

So off we went, leaving our pontoon berth at 09:00 for the 09:30 lock, half an hour after low.



Met some friends from Cardiff Bay yacht club in the lock. The cod were about, evidently, and they had four rods ready. The water level dropped and we were out.Leaving Cardiff locks



I was determined to try and fly our 'cruising chute' for the first time in these light winds. We'd taken it off the boat as too complex when we bought Ishtar, but now felt confident enough to give it a try. Louise helmed, taking us down past the Ranie buoy and out past Lavernock spit, whilst I set up the blocks, and tried to work out the rigging.

The wind picked up, Southerly now, so I put the spinnaker away, unhoisted, and set the genoa and main. Sailed SW, thinking we could run back up towards Barry using the spinnaker.

The time had come, so I rigged it again. I was really nervous, expecting all sorts of horrors. Oh, to hell with it, pull the Halyard and give it a go.

And she flew.

I quickly realised that it was a tri radial, and that rigging it as a cruising chute was wrong. Managed to keep it up though, despite changing wind direction, and actually sailed. I could not help grinning from ear to ear.

OK, now could i douse it? I didn't really know what I was doing, but just dropped it a bit at a time, stuffing it into the bag. Seemed to go fine. I'm a big believer in trying to keep things fun, when learning new skills. This certainly was fun.

Louise sailed us across to Flatholm. We had bought a new anchor, a Delta. New  to us anyhow.

We dropped the hook in 7m off the beach at Flatholm. I've never really mastered going astern with Ishtar, but the anchor dug in, and we had a cup of tea.

We were not there long before we got a VHF call from Vince of Cardiff yacht club. He was out on Alana, near the North Cardiff buoy, and would see us shortly.

Louise wanted to try setting the spinnaker, and did it well.

We didn't have it up long. The wind was now westerly, and we needed to go North West. She doused the spinnaker, put it away and we set genoa and main and neaeded for home, both delighted.

We could see Vince, on Alana headed our way, and it wasn't long before he was with us.

He turned, with the Holms behind, and we both headed back for the locks.

Half an hour or so later and we had locked in with 7 other boats and approached our spot on the pontoon.

A lovely day, and it seems so strange to think of so many boats not being used in such weather.