St Peter Port Guernsey

A lot has happened in the first half of 2024.  Whilst spending February in the shed at Boatworks, Blue Velvet had new skin fittings, the scratches on her topsides patched up, the bent stanchions and bases all sorted, a new genoa Furlex, the staysail Furlex refurbished, replacement guardrails, the mast wiring replaced, the chainplate bolts replaced, and a complete new set of standing rigging.  The outstanding work required was a refurbishment of the backstay tensioner, which needed a new bearing and seal, plus a new pulpit.  The latter was a bit of a drama as the one sent from the UK in January had poor quality welding and legs of different lengths.  It was rejected as a proper fix but we still needed to get BV to the UK so the guys at Boatworks managed to work it into position and bolted it down with one bolt on each leg to allow us to sail to Hayling Island for the next phase of the storm damage repairs; the respray.

The mast being re-stepped before relaunch

The respray was going to happen at the Hayling Yacht Company on Hayling Island on the south coast of the UK, just east of Portsmouth.  Typically for March the weather forecast was not looking good for a Channel crossing and we had the added complication that the Hayling Yacht Company is based up a small drying creek so arrival times were critical. Slightly later than we would have hoped, we departed Guernsey on 10 March with no wind for a motor up to Alderney in the hope of catching a weather window the next day for a Channel crossing.  The 0930am start had us sailing hard on the wind but by late afternoon the wind had backed to the west and we were able to get across to Portsmouth arriving at 11pm. Portsmouth was a bonus as it allowed us to meet up the next day with a good friend, Richard Farrington, and also to pick up a new genoa car (to match our discontinued models) which I had tracked down as old stock held by a supplier in Gosport.  It also meant that we could depart Gosport on Wed 13 March and time our arrival at Hayling Yacht Company to fit in with the tidal constraints of the drying creek.

BV sat high and dry at low water with her keel dug into the mud

It was quite windy on the Wednesday, so we took the opportunity to drop the genoa whilst we were en-route to Hayling Island, rather than wait until we were in the marina with the risk of the sail catching on surrounding boats and/or piles. Having felt our way into the marina towards the top of the tide, and hauled the keel through the mud into or berth, we spent our first ever night with BV in a mud mooring. As the tide went out, BV’s keel settled into the soft mud so that she was high and dry well before low water.  The following day we crept around the shallows to position her off the slipway so that she could be hauled out.

BV being hauled out at the Hayling Yacht Company on Hayling Island

After the haul out we spent a night on board and the next day watched as the mast was craned off.  At that point it was time for us to be picked up by our friends Jonathan and Anne Lloyd who very kindly hosted us for the night and even dropped us off at the ferry port first thing in the morning for our return to Guernsey.

BV in the spray bay

A proper respray is not a quick process.  BV needed to be put into the spray bay, and then after hours of careful preparation work and masking up, multiple layers of Awlcraft 2000 were sprayed on and left to fully harden.  It wasn’t until mid-May that it was time to get the ferry back to Portsmouth to pick her up.

New Coppercoat on the waterline

Anne very kindly picked us up from the ferry port and dropped us off at the boatyard, and a week later she and Jonathan hosted us overnight, which was a delightful break from hard work at the yard.  Deliberately arriving a few days before the launch date, which was constrained by the tide, we knew that we would have a busy few days ahead of us.  Before we launched, we wanted to gently sand the Coppercoat antifouling to expose fresh copper and reactivate it.  We had been told that we would have to do that inside the spray bay where there were properly filtered extractor fans.  However, our expected one day of work before BV was ready for the mast to be put back on turned out to be a few days longer.  The surface prep work for the respray had necessitated sanding away some of the Coppercoat along the waterline.  So, as well as reactivating the Coppercoat, we also found ourselves with the extra task of repainting Coppercoat along the waterline and then leaving it for a few days until it had hardened enough to be sanded ready for relaunch. 

BV being inched out of the spray bay

With the Coppercoat work complete, BV could be removed from the spray bay.  Easy enough to say, not so easy in practice!  BV was a very exact fit for the spray bay and the tractor/trailer driver and manoeuvring team needed to be absolutely on the ball to work her out of the bay, with just centimetres of clearance at times.  Once she was out (and we’d stopped holding our breath!), she was ready for the mast to be re-stepped.

And with the mast re-stepped, she was ready to be launched at the top of the tide on Friday 24 May.  But, as soon as she was back in the water, we needed to skedaddle from the Hayling Yacht Company slipway quickly before the tide dropped too much for us to get out of the creek. Once we were out of the creek we were able to relax a little and, while Nicky motored us along gently, I checked the rig tensions which you can only do when the hull is in the water.  Our backstay tensioner was still in Guernsey because the bearing needed for its refurbishment still hadn’t arrived from Italy, so instead our rigger had given us a huge bottlescrew and Dyneema strop as a jury-rigged replacement to get us back to Guernsey. So we were never looking for perfect rig tension, just something in the right ball park to allow us to sail safely back home.

We split the passage home to Guernsey over a few days.  Our first passage was a short one: Hayling Island to Shepherds Wharf in Cowes on the Isle of Wight.  Here we met up Tim and Ann Walters, some Guernsey friends who fairly recently moved to the Isle of Wight, and had a lovely evening catching up with them and admiring their new home.

We weren’t the only yacht taking advantage of the good wind to set off from the Solent

We left Cowes the following morning and had good sail across the Channel arriving in Alderney just before midnight.

Braye Harbour, Alderney

Aside from letting us to spend the Bank Holiday weekend in Alderney, our stop off also allowed us to pick up our new outboard motor from Mainbrayce Chandlery.  Our previous outboard motor had been damaged in the November storm and Mainbrayce had recently had their new stock delivered including our 9.8Hp Tohatsu to replace the one that had been damaged.

Alderney

Returning to Guernsey on Monday 27 May, the plan was to fit our refurbished backstay tensioner, do the final packing of BV and then set off on our next sailing adventure at the beginning of June.  However, we found out that the bearing had still not arrived from Italy.  All indications were that it had been lost in the post.  After an extensive internet search, I found one supplier in the UK that had just one of the required bearings in stock.  However, at £125 each it wasn’t something that I wanted to order on a whim when potentially we had 2 arriving from Italy “any day”.

The new bowsprit – wooden template (top left) and final version in position (bottom left and right)

As we were stuck in Guernsey waiting for the bearings to arrive, “any day now”, 2 tasks bubbled up as priorities.  The first was a new bowsprit.  Getting that welded was suddenly possible as our Guernsey supplier had got the right thickness stainless stell tubing in stock.  I made a wooden mock-up of the locating plate, tested the fitting with that and then the stainless steel version was made and welded onto the tubing along with an eye fitting and end plate.  To finish the job off, I shaped the heel of the tube to fit over the end of the anchor point on our foredeck.

The generator with the cylinder head and ancillaries removed

The other major job that I needed to tackle was sorting out an oil leak on our generator.  Two seals needed to be replaced but to do that the whole cylinder head needed to be removed, along with a lot of ancillary attachments.  It was a job that I had been putting off for far too long but with the delays I had no excuse not to get on with it.  The generator looked quite bare with the head off but despite my concerns about the size of the job, everything went back together seamlessly with new seals and gaskets to replace the old ones.  Better still, once the tappets had all been set up again, the generator fired up and ran perfectly and with no oil leak!

However, having been distracted for a further week, the bearings from Italy still hadn’t turned up. We decided that order was most likely lost and so ordered the last one in stock from the UK supplier.  In typical comedy style, on 13 June the bearing from the UK supplier and the 2 bearings form Italy all arrived in the same postal delivery.  The 2 bearings had been posted in Italy on 16 April and didn’t arrive in Guernsey until almost exactly 2 months later!!

Needless to say, our rigger, Mark Terry at INOX, who had been equally frustrated by the delays was a star.  The backstay tensioner was rebuilt, fitted and the rig tensions all set up properly within a couple of days.  That allowed us to set to with stocking up the fridge and rations lockers plus the last few clothes and other gubbins that we needed to squeeze on board.

BV all packed up and ready to go

With everything set and the weather forecast checked, we announced our departure time as 1300hrs on Sunday 16 June.  The time was fixed as the earliest we could get out of the QEII marina, and the day was set by the packing being finished and the weather being favourable. As an added bonus, it was also our 23^rdwedding anniversary so a further reason to celebrate.

Having announced our departure we had some leaving drinks on board the preceding evening and it was clear that some of our Guernsey friends JJ, Simone and Matt were plotting a departure surprise for us; we’d have to wait until 1300hrs to see what they had planned.

St Peter Port, Guernsey