'Daisy IV', Deben Lugger No19
Met up with some sailing chums for an overnighter, based at Titchmarsh Marina. The boat was still on her trailer following the Coniston event in June, and also some further mid-season maintenance. And I had Kizzy with me. Otherwise, I would have sailed round.
Herewith some video of the event.
Again, my failed electrics meant that I was unable to record my tracks from this event. Again, for the ship's log, I have entered an estimated trip length of around 10nm.
We attended the Coniston rally, 22-25 May. Unfortunately, the electrics on the boat had failed, so I wasn’t able to record tracks. My estimate (from previous visits) is that, over the two days, we went about 10nm.
I ran a little behind with the maintenance of this blog, so have lumped together various trips into one post, which I'll backdate to May.
Six sails happened during this period, prior to the boat coming back off the mooring for some mid-season maintenance, and preparation for a few trailer trips which will feature on subsequent posts.
Between the first and second trips, I had to indulge in some unexpected maintenance. The mooring strop became tangled around my centreplate and the centreplate uphaul snapped. To cut a long story short, the boatyard helped me run the boat onto the Hard, they then winched her up onto one of their slings and I had a weekend to put things right.
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| Centreplate woes. Daisy IV hanging ready for necessary repair work! |
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| At this point, a new strop has been fitted, but the plate is incorrectly positioned - the plate shouldn’t hang down vertically like this since this impacts negatively on performance. I needed to haul up on the strop so that the black bead just disappears up into the case, at which point the plate is angled at around 70 degrees to the horizontal. To get this positionally correct, single handed, required some patience, but I managed in the end! |
Which subsequently happened, although it wasn’t an easy job. If I find the time and the patience, I might get round to writing it all up in due course! The important thing is that, for the most part, the repair has worked, although later in the season I have had to change the rope I used for the uphaul, since the initial one was too stiff and wouldn’t spool around the wheel effectively.
The following video was from my trip on 18 April:
I also took some footage when I dry-recovered the boat back onto the trailer. Which means I've now launched and recovered the boat onto the Hard at Pin Mill. Who needs expensive slipways!?
Finally, a list of the trips, with colour links to the ensuing map:
20th March: White track, 4.3nm
2nd April: yellow track, 6.7nm
6th April: red track, 8.2nm
18th April, green track, 8.7nm
3rd May, orange track, 5.7nm
25th May, pink track, 0.4nm (!)
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| Total length of tracks: 34.0nm |
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| Daisy IV hibernating! |
It has been a busy Spring. Daisy IV had been rather neglected at the start of last season due to us moving to the coast, and having so many other things to do. I never really caught up with the various things that needed doing. So, late in February this year, I brought her, from her winter hibernation at the boatyard, back to the house to do a number of much needed pre-season jobs.
One was to replace, once again, the auto bilge pump. The bilge pump is an absolute necessity since, unlike previous boats, the boats design means that the bulk of any rainwater, when n her mooring, generally doesn’t drain out through the scuppers, but rather gathers in the bilge. The one I purchased last year, a Whale Supersub, was frankly next to useless. The auto function never really worked properly and either didn't come on when required or, when it did work, forgot how to suck out the bilge water and, having sparked into life, refused to turn off... So, this season, I purchased a new manual Rule pump and linked it up to a 'Waterwitch' float switch, and this finally seems to have worked well.
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| Waterwitch float switch |
Meanwhile, I am trying to regenerate a cover which came with the boat and might potentially be useful in diverting rain away from the bilges. More on that in due course…
Whilst working on the bilge pump, I took the opportunity to overhaul the modest electrical wiring in the boat, building and installing a wooden mounted box housing the fuse box, so that all the wiring is now hopefully kept better organised and safe from any accidental problems - such as aforementioned water gathering in the bilge!
I also spent some time working on the centreplate downhaul which, when removing the cover for inspection, turned out to be showing alarming signs of wear. This will be covered in a separate post since the saga continued post-launch.
The next thing was to fill an alarming number of deck holes which had been deliberately, one might say recklessly created by the previous owner, with his various mad projects. So, making use of a fibreglass repair kit, these were made good albeit that I have erred on the side of functionality rather than cosmetic finishing - the looks of it all can wait for another day - but I couldn't wait until the start of the new season.
The final thing was to fit a brand new sprayhood and tent. Unfortunately this hasn't been quite so successful as hoped since the tent Anglia Yacht Brokerage had ordered for me was incorrectly fitted, and so has had to go back for some important changes. I remain ever hopeful that this will return in time to get some serious usage later in the summer.
And then there was the usual wood treatment, cleaning and polishing, prior to the first launch date which is due to take place on 20th March, well within my notional target to be afloat before All Fools Day.
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| Launch day! |
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| red track, 7th October, 5.8nm; yellow track, 19th October 7.7nm |
Lots of Spring jobs in mind...
As ever, the weather has cycled through various events, some of which were conducive to sailing, others not. However, I have managed four brief sails over the past five weeks.
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| A blustery sail up to Ipswich Docks, where the weather did its worst… |
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| 28th August, white track, 2.8nm; 8th Sept, red track, 4.4nm; 23rd Sept, green track, 8.5nm; 27th Sept, yellow track, 8.5nm. |
In the meantime, I was able to do some repairs to the tender which I picked up in a bit of a hurry early this season, and which spends its year at the boatyard at Pin Mill. Chief amongst the issues were a damaged keelband and two 'watertight' buoyancy tanks, fore and aft, which were decidedly not watertight! So this was a good opportunity to practise some fibreglass repair work. Herewith, some pictures of the process:
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| Practising calligraphy…(badly!) |
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| The keel area just forward of the rear 'skeg' of the keelband was badly damaged. As per this picture, I was able to grind this back to the original wood and epoxy a number of layers of fibreglass repair tape, which can just be seen in the picture and which seem to be holding up well. |
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| The bit right at the end of the skeg needs some reinforcement and tidying up but it looks basically watertight, despite appearances so can wait till late in the year. |
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| Here's the bow buoyancy chamber. I had to remove and the the reseal the white watertight inspection hatch, using sikaflex. I then dug out the loose and cracked bonding between the bottom edge of the thwart and the inside hull, epoxied a layer of fibreglass repair tape right across the join and then painted the whole section in grey Danboline bilge paint. I could have made much more of this, and tarted-up the whole interior, and indeed the exterior but don't want to get too carried away and make the dinghy to be too attractive to anyone looking to 'borrow' this fine ship for any extended period of time…! |
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| Similar repairs done with the stern chamber. |
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| While I was at it, a few dings and scrapes were mended on the hull, which I decided at this point not to paint again for security reasons. |
It was great to be able to attend this event, particularly by making the passage round from the Orwell to the Deben.
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| 41.8nm, including yellow track 23.2nm from Friday, red track 12.2nm from Saturday, and white track 6.4nm |
