Sailing Imshi

Time to leave Brixham after a very pleasant, although longer than anticipated, stay. Just around the corner to Dartmouth where we had some house stuff to take care of, plus getting the hydrovane fitted. As usual, it wasn't without incident!

We had been on the town pontoon, and when the time came to leave there was quite a strong wind blowing us off which I thought would be helpful, as we had boats moored in front and behind. So the plan, as I carefully explained, was to untie the bow and let it swing out a bit, and then untie the others, and we should gently go with the wind, and job done. It was all working like a dream, except....errrr..... I was still on the pontoon! (note to self: make sure you are on the boat before untying the lines). Luckily, a couple of blokes from one of the neighbouring boats - who had probably been keeping a surreptitious eye on us to make sure we didn't crash into them - came and gave me a hand to haul her back in again so that I could jump aboard. Oh how we laughed!

The journey round was a bit livelier than we had anticipated, but at least it gave us a chance to practice our reefing before going up the river Dart, and mooring on one of the visitors pontoons.

We left Brighton for Lymington with good winds for a sail, but these soon turned so it was right on the nose, which meant motorsailing after the first couple of hours. A fairly uneventful journey until we got nearer to our destination, where it started to get rather foggy, and rather dark. Not a good combination. We did manage to get up to the marina without too much trouble, although by this time the wind had got up more than I would have liked. We found our allotted berth ,and it didn't take very long to realise that I couldn't get into it. No problem, we just found another one that was empty and went for that. It has to be said that we didn't actually end up in the one we were aiming for, but the one next to it, but as I've become fond of saying once we are tied up, anytime we've tied up without hitting anyone else is a result!

Time to leave Lymington, and all going well reversing out of our berth, until I saw that we had forgotten to unplug the electric cable. There followed a very uncool sequence that involved a lot of shouting and scurrying around, and we just about managed to get back in the berth without ripping the electrical pedestal off the pontoon, or hitting anything on the way back in. As there is often very little going on in marinas, anything untoward has everyone craning their necks to see what is happening. Very happy that we managed to provide the talking point for that particular day!

Had a great sail out of the Solent, and towards Portland Bill. The wind had turned once again on to the nose so we were once again motorsailing. A quick glance at the instruments showed that the water temperature seemed I bit high. Think I'll take a quick glance in the engine bay, and am immediately engulfed in a cloud of steam. "TURN THE ENGINE OFF". There then followed an impeller change, during which time, because of the tide, we were actually going backwards. However, alls well etc etc, and we arrived early next morning in Brixham extremely grateful that we had a spare impeller on board.

Have to say I'm looking forward to a trip when nothing goes wrong, but I am becoming less convinced that this will ever happen, surely it's not always a case of damage limitation

We completed the purchase of Imshi in January this year, and became the proud owners of a cabo rico 38.

There was some upgrading work that we wanted to carry out so we stayed in Haslar Marina, Gosport until the end of March. We then sailed/motored around to Ipswich, so we could practice with our new boat in waters that we were familiar with. The journey around the coast, with Rich and John from Halcyon Yacht Deliveries, was uneventful, which for the benefit of non sailors reading this, is a good thing.

We stayed in Neptune Marina for a further month to enjoy the delights of Ipswich, after which we decided to head a bit further down the river to woolverstone marina. Immediately after leaving the lock at Ipswich the engine stopped. This is never a good thing unless you have actually turned it off. We then proceeded to flounder around for a bit, barely missing the banks on either side of the river, and making no headway, as the wind was in the wrong direction. Just as I was about to get my brown trousers out, Mark (our soon to be best friend) arrived, saw we were in trouble and gave us a tow to woolverstone. Apparently, a wire had come loose and was shorting out the engine. I didn't feel it necessary to tell the engineer that this was probably a result of me having to squeeze through the engine bay as we had locked ourselves out of the boat a couple of days beforehand, and it was the only way I could think of to get in.

Anyhow, alls well etc etc. and it was off to pick up a mooring just off Pin Mill. A couple of peaceful nights, and it was goodbye to the Orwell and on to Ramsgate.

A very foggy trip over the Thames estuary, and into Ramsgate. I have nothing to say about Ramsgate, except that I would rather be lost at sea than return.

The next day a very pleasant and warm trip to Brighton. Which is where we are now.