On Wednesday morning I met Peter Austin and his wife Lynne at the FSC, and soon we were joined by Kim and Annette, visitors from Denmark. Kim had sailed with Peter on the racing boat Sixpack in the 1980.s and they had kept in touch ever since.
After a brief chat we proceeded to the boat where Peter and Kim did most of the preparation for sail while I fussed around the chart plotter and other issues. Soon we hoisted the mainsail with one reef then rolled out the headsail with the plan to make for Woodman Point on a starboard tack beating into a gentle S/SW breeze.
We started to roll in the headsail in order to place the boat on a starboard tack and the roller jammed. We could roll the sail back out but could not roll it back in in beyond a certain point. We considered the possibility of tacking the boat with the headsail rolled out but that would have been a very messy job of manually pushing a lot of canvas around the inner forestay as the boat crossed the wind and besides, it made sense to fix the problem now while the day was young and we were near our port than rather than later.
It as Peter, the foredeck man during his racing days who after some effort identified the problem as a rope crossover, and with some hard work managed to loosen and eliminate the crossover. He had advised me previously that there was simply too much rope in the roller, and now I agreed that I would see if it is feasible to shorten it. The roller drum fills with rope as the headsail is rolled out and empties when the rope is pulled by hand to roll in the headsail. The plan is to wait until there is a gentle steady breeze blowing from SW which will allow us to roll out the entire headsail while the boat is in the pen and see how much spare rope is left over and available for cutting. If shortening the rope is not feasible then I'll replace it with a thinner rope which should still be strong enough but will be harder on the hands.
Once we were on our way I spent much of my time below, dealing with the chart plotter. I inserted the Navionics SD card, powered up the unit, and found that it would not display the chart - all I saw was a black screen. The manual verified that I had inserted the SD card correctly, and the connections at the back of the unit where all good. After several failed restarts and a search of the manual that told me nothing I managed to reach Peter Turner the technician by phone. Everything that he suggested failed. He then suggested that I swap in the backup C120 which I could not do since it was not on board. Finally he advised that I bring the unit in to him so that he could look into the problem, to which I agreed.
But something told me not to give up and I began to explore the use of the physical and virtual controls on the chart plotter available to me. After seeing no solution in the Setup menu I went back to the black display and had a look at the usual selection of virtual buttons in a row along the bottom of the display. I hit the Presentation button, saw a set of chart display options, chose the first one labelled Standard, and Bingo!, I could now see a display of the chart. I then took the C120 through its paces and verified that it was all working OK.
Display showing the boat at Woodman point with the coastline painted pink by the radar.
The sliver of pink not far off the stern of the boat is probably the jetty.
When I eventually came back on deck I was surprised to see that we were almost at the mooring area. Even though I had been down below for most of the beat to the mooring I'm pretty sure that Peter & Kim were able to sail the boat on the rhumb line to the mooring area with no tacking. Peter soon spotted the two FSC moorings and before long we were safely on the mooring at 12.15pm, the appropriate time for lunch lunch and relaxation. We spent well over an hour on the mooring, first below deck sitting around the table in the saloon and enjoying a splendid selection of sushi provided by Peter & Lynne as well as a choice of cold cold drinks such as beer, a bottle of sparkling apple drink, and a bottle of Margaret River SSB white wine (which to my surprise was not required). After the meal most of the group went topside to continue their conversations in the pleasant surroundings of Woodman Point.
We then had a pleasant sail back to FSC, first with only the mainsail because it would blanket a headsail with the wind off the port quarter, but about about 30 minutes later we noticed that the wind had begun to veer toward the west and we rolled out some headsail, allowing us to steadily gain speed as we were able to roll out more headsail.
We must have entered the pen at about 4.30pm and Peter&Kim insisted on tidying up the boat before disembarking, which I greatly appreciated.
From the boat we went to the FSC bar to enjoy what must have been an hour of good conversation over cool drinks.
Eventually I excused myself to return to the boat to recover my mobile phone that I had left behind before heading to Brenda and Stephen's home.
For me it had been a splendid day of good sailing among wonderful people and I realised later that the day had vindicated my decision to hang on to Pachuca for just a bit longer.
