A Lovely Sail in Poor Weather

Tonight lots of things came together and it was good.

I took my new oars (and lock!) down to the dinghy at 6:45pm to row out to Kamala. Wind was a F4 easterly and the tide was gushing strongly into the harbour. Nearly gave up when I couldn't stem the tide to get out of the harbour. However nipping along the edge of the harbour wall I just made it out. Was quite choppy with the wind, as the fetch across the bay was pretty significant.

Made it to Kamala and tide the dinghy to the mooring and jumped aboard. Was aprehensive with the wind but the pierhead auto wind on CH18 said it was only gusting to 15kts. I'm sure it under-reads in anything except a southerly.

Because of the number of other boats nearby I set sail under second reef with the motor running in neutral, and had to use it to get going, but quickly turned it off. The tide was so strong there was no way I could head east to Elizabeth castle into the wind so I went out towards Belcroute with the tide and on a close reach. Felt very comfortable. Hardly heeling at all and making and acceptable speed through the water.

The wind died off fairly quickly and after 10 mins I decided to shake out all the reefs in the main and the jib. Despite the massively increased sail area, all we seemed to do was heel a bit more and not go much faster (this was still to windward).

The light was clearly diminishing by now (8pm overcast and drizzly) so I headed home. Sailed a bit faster slighly off the wind. Approached mooring on a run under main only, then close reached up to it. Just about managed to miss the dinghy and catch the mooring.

Was enough light to finish drilling the boom for the 1st reef fittings, so now all reef fittings are completed. I figure I won't make a permanent 3rd reefing system on the boom. I can either lash the 3rd eye to the second reef line or just strap it down.

I rowed back in the twighlight at 9:10pm.

Miles sailed: probably about 1.5
Hours Sailed: about 1

New Home #1

Last night I moved Kamala from her illegal parking space to what I think is her outer mooring. It was blowing up to F5 after work (the pics are from a different day later on) but it was the only time I had.

Disappointingly, the oar I'd left in my dinghy had been stolen, so I had to 'borrow' one from another, which I did return after use.


A good chance to try out the new second reef system and the overhauled engine. Both worked perfectly. The latter was burbling away at low revs in neutral as we sailed out of the harbour. A few gust caught us by surprise but the boat was more than up to it. Despite towing the dinghy we were sailing along merrily.

Wasn't confident enough to try sailing onto the mooring in the gusty westerly, and even under motor it would have been nice to have crew.

So now Kamala is on mooring L4 in St Aubins outer harbour. She seemed to be swinging around a lot more than the other boats around there, perhaps due to wind eddies, being so close to the harbour walls. Sadly, the lovely new white mooring buoy I'd decorated with Kamala's name and my phone number had disappeared from the mooring. Either worked loose, stolen, or moved by someone who thinks mooring L4 is theirs.

I reckon she floats at about 6m of tide. HT was 4:49pm BST last night and at 7:40 she was just aground. I'll do the calcs later.


On returning to dry land the first thing I did was to buy new oars. Not sure the decrepit dinghy is up to it though. Gunwales are almost off.