Hi All, after almost two years of hard and often time frustrating work on Shamrock, I have decided to sell her. I have received an offer which is acceptable and once the payment has come through it time to start looking for the replacement. "Son of shamrock" , or "Spirit of Gypsey" or "Saoirse".
As usual Im looking for a bargain but this time not a restoration project. I am feeling slightly sad about selling on Shamrock and enjoyed a picnic session rafted up on her off Long Beach Simon's Town yeserday afternoon.

Its been a while since I've updated my blog as progress on the boat has been very slow. I have been busy with upgrading my Skippers ticket and so attending lectures in the evening and the inevitable studying.
Anyway, I have had the full top sides repainted and am delighted with the results. I have also repainted the forward cabin in white which has lightened the space up considererably and made it look a lot more roomy.

More work is being carried out on Shamrock currently. I am having the deck and cockpit area repainted, which has been long overdue. The state of the deck is particularly noticable since I recently had the windows replaced with black perspex. I am having her repainted with the white and grey non slip as she previously was and hopefully this will last a few years and improve her looks. Otherwise work has kept me busy for the past few weeks and I haven't manage to prgress any further with my 12v PC but have ordered an additional 1Gb of Ram, a flexible keyboard and a new wireless mouse..I would like to get this set up next weekend if possible.
More pics to follow.

Well after replacing all the filters and bleeding the engine throughly, she is starting on the button and sweet as a nut (well for a diesel nut). Other things being worked on currently include a new stack pack..why is it taking so long North sails?. I am also in the process of getting the deck repainted. This has been long outstanding and will really improve the appearance of Shamrock.
Another area which I have been fiddling with recently is a 12V computer set up for the boat. I have through one of my marina neighbours Alistair, to a small form mini PC, which operates on 12v as well as a screen and a GPS mouse. When I manage to get the whole lot up and running, I will have a full set of charts, an active GPS mouse, 160 Gbs of HDD space, which is plenty my MP3 collection and the flexibility of another marine screen displaying the charts under the sprayhood. Talking of spray hoods, a rather nasty south easter managed to dissamble my canvas hood and supports completely last week, which was quite opportune as I have spied another Fortuna 37 locally which has a really neat permanent dog house arrnagement. I have taken a few snaps and will look at getting a similar one made for Shamrock

I decided to enter the Easter regatta recently. One of the Lads in FBYC Roy, volulteered to go with me and also recruited a female friend to come along. My wife and child also agreed to come along and we made an arrangement to meet at the yacht an hour before the off. Roy also invited another German lady who was visiting the club along. When my wife arrived she decided not to come as we had sufficient crew and my daughter Storm deceided to go another on another yacht as one of her pals was on it.
We had a great start but in hind sight we struggled to keep pace with the other yachts and this I have put down to incorrect Genoa track settings and probably too much sail out. We were wallowing in last position and decided to head back to the club on a nice reach. As we approached club we started to lower the furl the sails and I attempted to start the engine, which as the title of this blog relates refused to co-operate. So I retired from the race over the radio and requested a tow in the same message which seems to be quite an unusual thing! You would guess. The club ferry came out to meet us and towed us with soem difficulty back to our berth where many hands were waiting to assist us with the docking manouver.
I spend the next day looking for the problem, which I identified as fuel related and eventually got the engine running again by bypassing all the filters. I have replaced all the filters, rewired the fuel pump and changes soem of the hoses and she now starts on the first swing.
The after regatta party was good and excellent catering by Neptues restaurant was most welcome.

We have completed in our first Family race on Shamrock. I dont really enjoy the round the cans stuff as it doesn't suit either the boat or myself. However I do enjoy the medium long distance races and two weeks ago we have a 21 Nautical mile pursuit race to Gordons Bay on the other side of False Bay. I was looking forward to it as there were two similar boats entered which both have a relaxed attitude to racing. The morning broke and looked ok with little or no wind and then it started to rain. My job was to prepare the boat while my wife organised the grub and our daughter with all of her associated baggage.
I prepared the boat and put an extra 20 litres of diesel on board just in case and went home to fetch the gang. With the car stuffed to the gills, we set off to the yacht club. We loaded everything on board and released ourselves from the dock and headed out into the bay. The wind was light and wind the main set and the engine running I manouvered the yacht and started to head up to the line. My plan was to release a small amount of Genoa before the start and then once under way open her up fully. I understood there to be a one minute warning blast but that turned out to be incorrect and the one minute balst was the start. Anyway we released the genny and headed out across the line 2nd in our small group. We were behind Silhouette in crossing the line and ahead of Exhale. Vernie in the lead boat just pulled off into the distance and nothing I did could stop them pulling away. Exhale and ourselves were more evenly matched and we swapped positions about three times going across the bay. I managed to point a bit higher than them which paid off as we pulled ahead across the bay. As we were heading into Gordons Bay the wind came up a bit and we were over powered but as we had two boats hot on our heels, I left all the canvas up and strugged to steer the boat in towards GB. A little bit closer to the finish line and we were in the shelter of a headland and the wind dropped down to a gentle breeze as we coasted over the line.
We had a party at the club and were received very well by the GBYC members. During the night the wind came up again and worsened throughout the morning. I was hesitant to set out into a gale but eventually did and I also took along the crew of another boat as they didnt fancy the high seas.
\We flew back home in the highest winds and roughest seas I have ever sailed in but all seven of us made it back in one piece. More than could be said for soem of my equipment. damage included two small rips in the Genoa (repaired) and a wrecked stackpack and also my deck light fell off...
All in the name of fun. There are two more races this weekend..now if only I could get a crew....