Repairs and modifications...

The nice weather meant I could fix the Aries (again). I had a nasty night at anchor in the Dornoch Firth towards the end of last season, and the violent movement somehow made the gear between the vane mechanism and the pendulum jump. I'm still trying to figure out how this happened - I couldn't 'force' it back.

Anyhow, I pressed the pin out in situ (see earlier post on this method) and got everything working again. This involved a lot of leaning over the stern and reaching out through the pushpit, tying tools to pieces of line in case I dropped them, trying not to swear ... I'm getting a bit stiff and old for these contortions and anxieties. It's good to get it working again though.

I also fitted a separate fuel tank for the Webasto heater:

It used to have a feed from the main fuel tank, but the line was quite long & the pump seemed to be making hard work of it. The heater would flame out or become smoky as a result. It took me a while to figure out what was happening but when I tried running it directly from a fuel can all the problems went away ...

You may wonder at the odd angle. I wanted the filler cap at the top, to avoid slopping fuel into the 'dry locker' (which has become a bit of a 'dirty store'). It all seems to have worked perfectly. Except I now have less excuse for putting '60/40' on my red diesel form. Power generation might count ...

Spring (?) Sail

At the end of January I had a two night trip to Portmahomack. It was cold, but the weather beckoned.

On the way back I had more wind than I (or Windy) anticipated.

After rounding Tarbat Ness I had a very fast reach over to Lossiemouth. Hard on the wind for the first hour, then 50-60 degrees off for the rest, not too much sea running.

I wasn't reefed, but would have put one in if I'd realised it was going to be so breezy. Mostly 17-20 apparent.

When I tied up in Lossiemouth, I had covered 22 nautical miles in three and a half hours - about 6.3 knots through the water

For more than an hour as I was approaching Lossiemouth, my boat speed stayed consistently above 7 knots. The conditions were ideal - a new wind, with little fetch (from the S, SW) meant there wasn't a sea running.