The problem having a mud mooring is that I get about 2 - 3 hours either side of high water, so to do day sailing (i.e getting back on the same tide) and not mooching around in the dark means it has to be a spring tide ...
For the non-boaties: tides (and weather!) dictate everything... the spring tides occur every two weeks, shortly after the full and new moons. Portsmouth Springs high water is around mid-day and midnight. Each day the the high water point is about 45 minutes later, until it becomes Neaps for a week, when the high water is about 6 am/pm.. very interesting is the impact of weather fronts too... when you get a low pressure front the water is not pressed down so much, so when a storm comes through the high water can be anything up to 2 metres higher... hence sea flooding and boats snapping their moorings etc etc ... interesting eh?
Enough of that! back to the plot... so I launched on the tail end of Spings and spent the next week (during neaps) at Port Solent Marina and then come back on the mud mooring for the next spings.. Port Solent is great but my mooring was right next to the restaurants: the smells coming over were wonderful and drove me bonkers! but at £16 a night ? what a nightmare!
Anyway, it meant I could get in a couple of weeks sailing before I would have to bring her ashore again because my insurance only covers April- September on the mooring (which is exposed to westerlies.. not a good place to be during the Autumn/Winter!)
So how did it go? amazing ....once I got the engine going!!! The bloody starter would'nt work.. my friend Bernie-the-Bosun" said have you tried shorting out the solenoid... now he could have been talking Urdu cos me no understandy electrikery and such things! What it amounted after a demonstration is poking a screwdriver across thesolenoid terminals...after a squirt of 'starter gas' into the air intake (the pre-heater glow plug was'nt working either)... resulting in a gert great flash of sparks, a meter long flame out of the air intake and the engine exploding (literally) into life... what jolly fun!!
The launch day started as a Force 3 from the east (great) .. everything went fine.. I was on my own, chugging around the harbour, by this time the wind built up to a Force 6, my plan was to start gently but I thought Sod it I have to try out the sail... getting it up was hard work (even with a 4-1 halliard) but I got there, leaving the bottom panel reefed.. It went like a railway train ... on the beam reach (the fastest point of sailing, the wind coming in from the side) I was hitting 6.8 knots .... which does'nt sound much, but for my boat thats its top possible speed..
Another little note for the non-boaties: unless a boat can plane over the water, the speed of a displacement boat is dictated by its water line length... the longer the boat the faster it can go (there is a formula but I wont bore you).... what it amounts to is that you could have the biggest engine you like going full tilt and all it will do is push the boat down into the waves: it ain'nt going to go any faster moosh!!
After a couple of weeks I think I am starting to get a feel for the rig, it is very different to sailing a bermudian job.. I did'nt get any photos of her sailing but here's a few taken on the mooring:
Hi Chris iv just become the proud owner of bobtail. Your blog is very helpful. I'm on the river deben if you ever wana come see her again
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