Monday, May 27, 2013

Chilly overnight trip to Manchester


They say memorial day is the official start of summer but with forecasts of 50 degrees and rain for the weekend, its not so summery. We decided to brave the cold and go for an overnight trip to Manchester anyway. Not only was today cold, it was really windy. The coast guard had declared a small craft advisory for the afternoon.

Very churny, choppy seas behind us leaving Boston

We started out with reefed main and reefed genoa but once we got into the north channel, we completely furled the jib. we were doing 7-8 kts the whole way.

We were considering turning back at one point.  There was not a single other boat out on the water besides us.  Even when we got near Marblehead - the diehard sailing capital of New England - we saw only one other boat.  We were freezing, we were pounded by wind and waves and we were getting very wet with spray.  We kept going.  Every time it calmed down a bit, it would be followed by more really strong gusts.  We both think this is the highest wind we had ever sailed in.

High wind and waves.  Bob fights the helm and Linda snaps a picture
At one point a big dark cloud formed to the north and it looked like it might be a squall line.  The wind really picked up then but the main part of it passed mostly behind us.  Soon after that, the sky started clearing and the wind got a little lighter.

Heading our way

I think it's safe to say that the reason we were the only boat out there was more due to the cold than the wind and waves. When it's warm, we definitely see people out sailing in this type of stuff.

As we entered Manchester channel, the sun was coming out and the wind and seas were calming.  We were happy to see several of their transient moorings available so we grabbed one.  We were dinghyless on this trip so we just stayed put on the boat all night and had a lovely home-cooked meal onboard.  No fancy Manchester nightlife this time.

Entering Manchester Harbor

We woke to a chilly but beautiful sunny morning and set off at about 07:15 for home.  We had a charter booked for 2pm and we wanted to get back in plenty of time to get the boat ready for that.

Morning in Manchester

Manchester harbor is very sheltered.  The boats here very often keep fenders on their sterns because the wind is so calm in here that the boats all start swinging opposite ways on their moorings and bumping into each other.  On this morning, there was a schooner behind us.  His mizzen boom was bumping into the windshield of the boat next to him!
Excuse me


Very low tide...  Manchester channel is very narrow.  You can see a few people push the limits of low water with their boats:




Kayak fishing is very popular in Manchester.  We almost always see a few guys out with these types of rigs early in the morning.  Looks really peaceful.




We had a great fast ride home.  The winds were not as high as on the way up, but they were still pretty strong. We had a full main but partial genoa for most of the trip. We rarely dropped below 6kts the whole way.

First glimpse of Boston from about 12 miles away as we round Marblehead


Once we got out of the north channel, the wind direction was such that we had to tack a lot to make any progress toward home.  That slowed us down quite a bit at the end but we still made it in about 4.5 hours.    We had time for lunch and almost a quick nap before our charter passengers arrived

See the whole May 2013 photo album
2013-may-fujin
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Sunday, May 26, 2013

Fixing the toilet


Once again the most important task on the boat is fixing the toilet.   No one thinks too much about the head until it doesn't work right.  Anyway, this is the second time I've done the rebuild kit on this one.  I would have hoped there would be a little more time between maintenance cycles.

On to happier thoughts...

While giving so much attention to the bathroom, we noticed that we kept accumulating a small amount of water on the bathroom floor.  Our suspicion was that it was coming up through the shower drains.  So I decided to replace the impeller for the shower sump pump.

The shower sump unscrewed from the bulkhead.  Bottom plate removed exposing the impeller
As it turns out, I don't think the impeller had anything to do with this problem.  So we may still have a mystery, but in the meantime, we have a brand new impeller on the sump pump. 

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