Shakedown

This post is a little late as I finally got to do a shakedown trip, up to now apart from the delivery from Queenborough round to Conyer I had only done two brief trips out on the tide in the Swale and I really wanted to give everything a more thorough test.


I started the week last Monday by fitting the rack for the storage containers behind the cooker, I had made the parts some time ago and had been looking for some suitable containers for tea, coffee etc. Now I know that may be the wrong way to do a job like this but a couple of weeks ago I found exactly the containers for the job in Sainsburys.

Rack for storage containers

Getting back to the shakedown I left Conyer on the Wednesday afternoon high water and sailed in company with a friend up through the Swale, West Swin, Middle Deep and the Swin Spitway and anchored off Jaywick for the night unfortunately there was a bit of a swell rolling in which led to  pretty sleepless night. Leaving Jaywick on Thursday morning we sailed around before anchoring for the night on the North side of the entrance to the River Blackwater where again the swell led to another uncomfortable night. After raising anchor on Friday morning we sailed over to Bradwell Marina for the night after a good shower, a couple of pints and some fish and chips a decent nights sleep ensued. In order to return home on Sunday making the best use of the tide we left Bradwell on Saturday afternoon and after sailing up the Blackwater to Osea Island we came back down and anchored in the River Colne off Brightlingsea where peaceful night ensued. Leaving the Colne at 07.00 with about three hours of the ebb to run so that once through the Swin Spitway we could take advantage of a favourable flood tide to carry us all the way home. With a westerly 3 or 4 forecast we had a cracking sail home even with the baggy mainsail in fact I had to slow right down passing Faversham as I would not be able to get into Conyer Creek until about 15.00 as I was going I would have been at the entrance to the creek about 14.00 with an hour to wait so the last couple of miles were run with the mainsail and the engine on tick over with the wind on the nose creeping along at about 2 knots.

Sailing down Middle Deep

Red Sand forts

All in all I am quite happy with the way the boat sails making a fairly effortless 7-8 knots much of the time, albeit with a favourable tide, all the various systems that I had installed worked perfectly. There were only a couple of minor niggles there has been a persistent water leak on the engine fresh water side which I thought I had cured  but on further investigation in Bradwell I finally found it on the connection from the cylinder head to the calorifier coil which is very difficult to access however with the aid of a hammer and a screwdriver I managed to tighten it up to reduce the leak to a minimum in order to do a proper job I will have to remove the heat exchanger again. Then on leaving Bradwell turning the key to start the engine resulted in just an ominous click of the solenoid, on checking round it appeared that the main contacts were not making so the emergency starting tool was used, a screwdriver across the solenoid terminals, and with a few sparks the engine fired up immediately. The rest of this week will be spent sourcing and fitting a new solenoid and fixing the water leak once and for all.