Day Sail to Woodman Point

Peter and I met at 8 AM on Sunday 16 January for a short sail to Woodman Point not far from the club with the purpose of seeing how the new anchor windlass would handle the recently installed chain-rope rode. We motored out of the marina at about 9.30 AM and set sail in a brisk easterly wind with one reef in the mainsail and no jib. The boat moved well as we sailed south next to the shipping channel on a port beam reach, comfortable reaching speeds of more than 6 knots.

Peter at the Helm

Approaching Woodman Point

 

We dropped anchor in 4 meters of water off the beach and the anchor easily bit into the sandy bottom. We then successfully paid out the 30 meters of chain but when we attempted to continue by paying out the 20 meters of rope the windlass jammed, instantly throwing the electrical breaker. Even though the splice of the rope onto the bitter and of the chain appeared to have been professionally done there was enough lump in the splice to cause the jam. It was a disappointing result but we were satisfied that we had achieved our mission and were pleased that we had identified the problem in home waters rather than during the Bunbury Cruise. I had no patience for an attempt to make the chain-rode system work, possibly with a new splice of a new rope, particularly since we had not been able to perform the second test of whether a wet rope would have sufficient weight to fall into the anchor well fast enough to prevent a jam, as the dry rope had done.

After some relaxation on the boat we set sail in the early afternoon for our return to the club marina. By then the wind had shifted to a variable SE so we sailed more or less downwind with a partial headsail. After clearing the Parmelia bank we rolled in the headsail and motored directly for the club. When we switched off the engine in the pen at about 3 PM it had 600.3 hours on the clock, amazingly few hours for a engine that is now 10.5 years old (commissioned in La Paz Mexico on 16 Aug 2010). Peter and I plan to meet at the boat shortly before the start of the Bunbury Cruise on 6 Feb to replace the failed rode of 30m of chain and 20m of rope with the all-chain rode of 38m that had safely taken me around the world.