Ever get one of those feelings that sits in your gut a little heavy….signalling something’s not quite right…. but you dismiss it…. Instead you assume it’s last night’s dinner, exhaustion, complacency or perhaps just your own inexperience causing you to doubt your intuition? But you realise at the end of it all, with inevitable muttering of “I knew it” that your intuition is not to be messed with in any way! Lesson learned I tell you.

Having been joined for the weekend by one ...

I have been pushed and prodded and now found competent to handle a recreational marine vessel thanks to 5 hours of intense tuition and scrutiny (not)….now isn’t that a fucking scary prospect… somehow I think there may well be a wee bit of difference between the ability to handle a 2 meter dingy and a 13.3 meter yacht with a 10 tonne displacement…but hey…who am I to argue with skipper Phil eh?... nonetheless I have my ticket to ride (aka. Licence to kill) …now it's time to put it t...

Live and learn

August 20 2010

There’s a chinese proverb that goes something like… “Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand”....  and if you get all three you learn!

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Well we’ve been out twice now…the first sail was a bit of a non-event…bugger all wind and lots of time spent fart-assing around with sails with little more than a breeze to fill them and a lost tender (recovered thank Christ)…. As per usual though th...

Getting to and from shore is a pretty important thing really…until yesterday I would have had absolutely no idea how to do it on my own! Yes that’s right I could have been stranded on Hafskip with no way to reach dry land aside from frantically waving my arms at passing dinghies or getting awful wet…..but thanks to yesterday’s lesson and some patient tutoring I now at least stand a reasonable chance of handling Houdini….even if I do seem to have a flair for missing neutral when I ap...

We’ve been makin’ a list an’ checkin’ it twice…

My word there’s allot to do before we’re blue water ready! Hafskip is a very seaworthy vessel but her original owner made quite a few alterations and enhancements that make her a tad complex to operate and understand. Not to mention the alterations we’ll need to make to ensure we can store and operate everything we’ll be needing….. Hmmm….I get the distinct impression that if Ralph wasn’t so technically minded we’d be s...

Monday was a big swell day.. ever watched your rubber duck throw itself against the side of your bath when you move in the water…. Imagine being inside the duck!  

With Ralph playing in the bilge again, add diesel fumes to some pretty unpredictable swaying and bobbing the inevitable result is a pretty queasy stomach.

As fortune would have it I had an optometrist appointment so headed for shore for a couple of hours leaving Ralph in the fumes and swell. Luckily Ralph’s stomach appears be...

Water, tender, waves, fender, anchor chain….they all work together in a weird kind of symphony. Funny how music creates order out of chaos… Rocked to sleep last night amidst the disjointed but strangely compatible melody imposed by wind, wave and steel.

OK…the generator and the inboard are in the same area of the boat, under the cockpit and they share the same bilge.

We learned 2 things today…the generator (known affectionately as ‘the gennie’) has a water leak….somewhere??? and the inboard engine has an oil leak (looks like a dipstick seal has died…somehow??.

So what does all this mean? Basically it means Ralph once again has had to get down and dirty with the bilge… there is a bilge pump of course, but there’s no point u...