And so the season begins

Our 2024 sailing season didn’t get off to the best of starts. After we hit a rope in the water last season, which rendered our engine unusable, we had a new prop shaft and coupling installed (at great expense, inevitably) over the winter. It transpires that when the boat was reengineered prior to our purchase the job had been bodged (which disappointingly didn’t show up on the marine survey) hence the damage was greater than it should have been.

Pool of water, even after we’d pumped out gallons of the stuff

The boat was prepared and launched ready to sail around to her summer mooring on May 5th. Or at least, this should have been the case. Unfortunately when we visited on May 4th to drop off luggage, fill the water tank etc, the boat was full of water. We pumped her out and left, returning the next day to discover she was full of water once again. Unfortunately the marine engineers had failed to seal the new prop shaft properly, which caused her to flood, doing great damage to the new coupling, the interior of the boat, the electrics, the soft furnishings and more. I was absolutely seething and told the engineers in no uncertain terms that I expected them to put right at their expense, and to cover any additional marina expenses. Credit to them, they did, and actually did an improved job. It was very disappointing to (once again) launch Goshawk later than we had intended.

Thankfully drier, and coupling re-reinstalled

In the end, we eventually sailed from the marina to Wrabness on Sunday 26th May. I say we, it was just the children and me, with a slightly hairy North Sea section, but we made it, and for the most part we had an excellent sail. A consistent stiff southerly enabled us to spin round from the North Sea to Wrabness on one tack. We even managed to overtake a very sleek looking much newer yacht as we headed up the Stour!

We moored Goshawk up and then abandoned her for a few weeks.

We arrived back at Wrabness on Saturday and on Sunday motored out to her to check her over. She was looking great with minimal bird poo and a very dry bilge. What’s more, the engine was fully functioning!

Today we managed to get aboard her again and went for a sail. We left the mooring under sail, headed to the number 5 (green) buoy, turned round and went with the outgoing tide almost to number 1 buoy. When we departed the breeze was a reasonably brisk northerly, but as we passed Harkstead it spun to the east, which was slightly irritating! We ended up tacking a few times, before turning and running back. Not for the first time I was very impressed with how easily Goshawk goose wings.