We-ell, was there really nothing notable since last August? Yes and no. We've only been day sailing down the Medway and back, so not much on the way of passage plans and navigation. Not adventuring as such. Yet every trip out has its moments, and every sail is a joy. So let's catch up a little bit with quite a long blog of log extracts followed by some general notes on river sailing.
30 Aug: F3-4 NW, sunny, warm, many boats, lovely calm sail down river with foresail only, turned at Stangate Creek and beat back. Had Kevin our decorator on board, many years ago he worked at the Isle of Grain docks, interested to see it from the water for the first time.
01 Sep: F3 W, hazy sun, foresail only to Stangate, saw Orca (Geoff & Ness) on their way back, tacked back into F4 with full main & 1 reef in foresail (makes winching on short tacks less onerous)
08 Sep: F2-3 SW, motored down into early flood, wind built at Darnett Fort so foresail only in F3-5 to Stangate buoy, tacked back with the main flood into SW 5-6 gusting 7 with full main and 2/3 foresail
18 Sep: F3 NW, full sails, ~3kn against the flood, last of the flood down to the bottom of Stangate Creek, tacked around S of Slaughterhouse Pt., motor-sailed back in F4-5 NW
12 Oct: F3-4 E, cool & sunny, tacked all the way out past Sheerness. Colin & Jo on board from Trutz - the lovely people who gave us a sail in their Nicholson 35 out of Chichester harbour on a blowy day before we bought ours, so we could see how it handled. (Obviously we liked it :-). Wind died on the return, motored back, saw a seal close by in Kethole Reach.
15 Oct: F3-4 W, cold & sunny, went out to fill fuel tank for the winter (fuel pontoon is outside our locked marina) - as we were out, we motored up to Rochester bridge, the upriver limit for masts, and sailed back under foresail only.
17 Oct: F4-6 W, both sails - the Log just says 'down and back' ! I think that's when we started leaving lockers open and running the dehumidifier - clever machine that, very effective
05 Dec: ran engine on pontoon, doubled up the warps
25 Dec: drank a toast to sailing in general and SIRENA IV in particular, dehumidifier being too clever, thinks there's blockage in outlet pipe to sink, fills it's own tank and stops
18 Jan: F5 SSE, beat up to cranes with one reef in main and foresail and roared back on a beam/broad reach - cold but not bitter, lucky to miss large swathes of black cloud. Saw a seal again (see 12 Oct). Lock-keeper said "thank god someone is going out". We had to force ourselves a bit to go out, and once out were extremely pleased that we did - it's the way with winter sailing. Despite sporting a nice skirt of weed, and probably plenty of barnacles underneath, she sailed very well reaching 6kn through the water.
General observations: short tacking above F3 for us older ones is a lot easier with a reefed foresail (ours is a 140% genoa) and does not seem to reduce performance; short tacking up (or down) the river with the tide is ok - doing it against the tide is soul-destroying and we choose to motor-sail with just the main when against the tide; with the wind behind and no particular hurry, sailing under foresail only is easy and pleasant - the bends in the river would mean multiple gybing and anyway the main masks the genoa (when we buy a whisker pole, we might use the main more, with a preventer of course).
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