Where's she gone?

It doesn't matter whether you own a car, bike or yacht, the feeling in your stomach is the same when you return to where you left it .... and it's not there any more!!!

It's not like leaving a car in an unfamiliar city centre, it's a local marina and I know where I parked it. After what seemed like hours but was actually about a minute I saw the distinctive Rutland wind generator spinning happily.... the marina had decided to move us to another berth without letting us know. We were told this was to be our permanent berth but when I turned on the instruments it became clear there was less water in the new berth than the old one, so a quick chat with the office followed, especially as we'd just received the invoice for 2016-17 !!!

We had to make the decision to put the winter cover on Silhouette despite valiant attempts to go sailing before the end of the year. Unfortunately the winds have been relentless blowing force 6 - 9 with gusts over 50 knots regularly. The cover was in 3 parts with zips and attaching points everywhere, but what a clever piece of kit. We had to remove the lazyjacks and the mainsail from the mast track but the cover goes over the boom and runs from the bow to the stern allowing full height in the cockpit.

The good thing is fresh air still runs through the decks and we can work on cleaning the teak in all weathers along with polishing the top sides without getting wet. We will arrange for Silhouette to be lifted out of the water in early February for a month so we can antifoul, check anodes and the rudder bearing which was the only thing our surveyor mentioned, and by his own admission he was being picky so it may well be fine !

We always knew buying Silhouette at the end of October meant actually sailing could very well be unlikely, but we have and will continue to use the time wisely to get to know all her systems so when we "splash" in March the fun will begin without worrying which raymarine alarm sounds, such as the Raymarine smart controller sounding because Ian switched off the power supply to it !!!

So that's all for 2015, here's looking forward to the start of the new season and the adventures begin.

Happy Christmas !