A fine day, first sail, and a trip up the mast.

At last, the weather has broken and we are blessed with calm days and blue skies. After weeks of grumbling and moping, we were able to go for our first sail as a family. We stayed on board overnight. Max has been hard work recently, as his speech is slow to develop and he's frustrated that he can't get his point across clearly - it's getting better but we were all exhausted by the end of a long Friday at the end of a long week. To give Mummy a break, the kids and I went for a paddle around in the dinghy.

Max and Issie settled down better this time as they get used to sleeping aboard, although Max still wants to watch the sunset at 10pm. Here's me reading him a story before the first attempt at bedtime.


The next morning, we took on board a couple of helpers - Sean as useful pair of hands and 5 year old Sam accompanied Issie and Max. By midday we were ready to go, Max started the engine - one of his favourite things - and we motored cleanly away from the berth. The first hurdle was overcome. The Orwell was like the M25, this was the first sunny Saturday of the season and everyone was out, so we waited for some clear space to hoist the sails. the mainsail was very hard to hoist, but it had been on the delivery trip too, so I added that to my 'things to look at' list. It was to be looked at sooner rather than later....

Sails up and drifting along nicely with the breeze, we decided to hear up the next river, the Stour, for a quiet anchorage and a bite of lunch. Turning the corner, the wind built a bit and the boat heeled nicely, although the kids were a bit surprised to find their world suddenly canted over at 20 degrees. It quickly led into a game of climbing from one side of the saloon to the other, so no permanent trauma there. The autopilot worked a treat and the boat seems to handle very well under these conditions, a good sign. I've found that instead of standing at the wheel trying to see around the pilothouse and sprayhood, you're best setting the autopilot and standing somewhere else for a better view. A bit different to the racing boats I used to sail.

We identified a nice spot to drop the hook and have lunch, so I asked Gesa to drop the sails. the main came halfway down and stopped. Oops. That'd be something jammed up the mast - probably the thing making it so hard to hoist. Time to look at that. So with the autopilot still in command, and Sean under instructions for taking avoiding action at the wheel, I took a knife and hammer with me and climbed halfway up the mast. Thank goodness for mast steps, another cruising boat special. A couple of minutes later and a jammed slider was removed, the main was down and we could anchor for lunch.



The anchor winch took a bit of working out, but did it's job well in the end, and we settled down to a good hour and a half of sitting around and watching the world go by. It was a perfect day for that, not too hot, not too windy, good company and a poughmans (yachtsmans?) lunch. The wind swung right round over lunchtime, so we picked up the anchor, motored back to the junction of the two rivers then sailed a bit more towards home.

Back at Woolverstone, we topped up the diesel tanks, but these are big tanks, so 350 litres was a painful reminder of why we'll sail whenever we can! Having said that, we could motor almost 400 miles on that, and we now have 1000 litres on board, so it could take a long time to use all that. The wind picked up as we returned to our berth - it always does at just the wrong moment, so we had some challenges getting a lot of boat into a narrow space, but no damage done to us or our neighbours so there ends a sucessful first outing.

Here's to many more....