08 April 2006 | Badalona Marina
Tom
Morning sail with Virginia. A sunny Saturday with a moderate southern breeze. On leaving the marina we immediately noticed how the engine had to struggle hard against the wind and the boat advanced extremely slowly. It's clear quite a lot of fouling must have been accumulating on the propeller over the last months, making it rather inefficient. I will have to fetch my diving gear and do a bit of underwater scraping (unless I manage to schedule a haulout soon).
We sailed around for about three hours and then returned to the marina. Motoring improved a little as fouling got slowly washed away. I was a bit worried about the engine's reduced reactivity when approaching the pontoon with the wind from behind, but I managed to stop the boat perfectly in its berth.
Tomorrow more sailing.