Sea Trial

On Saturday 14 December we took Pachuca out on her sea trial.  I was accompanied by Ron Viney an experienced sailor and good friend whom I have gotten to know during our years of participation in the club's annual Bunbury Cruise.

Ron arrived at the boat at 9 am sharp and at 9.30 we were under way using the motor because the wind was so light.  The first test we did was to motor the boat in a 360 degrees circle to confirm that the autopilot's flux gate compass was working correctly. At the shipping channel we hoisted sail heading south and by the time we reached the southern end of the channel we were  under full sail: mainsail  all the way to the top and genoa fully rolled out.  It was all very pleasant because the apparent wind was only around 14 kts. 

We then turned around and sailed to Woodman Point where with Ron at the bow watching things I dropped anchor over a sand patch using the new control system where I can both drop and raise the anchor from the cockpit. The new winch and control performed brilliantly, which was the highlight of the sea trial.   I was amazed at the speed of chain travel from the new winch.

There were some procedural stuffups because it had been about 2 years since I had sailed the boat, but in general things went very well.  There was a problem with the connection of the mainsheet to the traveller (since corrected) and Ron pointed out that the jib sheets were too short for the larger genoa sail, estimating that I would need sheets 3.5 m longer. The following week I purchased a new  port sheet 13mm in diameter and16m long, with the starboard sheet on order.  

This successful sea trial marked the end of the difficult and expensive 15-month refit of Pachuca.