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| Sunday morning fog about 200m Vis. |
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| Replaced the Goose Neck Fitting. |
We are still in Saldanha Bay at Yachtport SA marina. We have sort of just settled in for winter. The rig is replaced and the new sail has had a trial run now that we have the new goose neck fitting.
Fuel tanks are out getting cleaned, serviced and modified. We are having an extra inspection opening put in each tank to enable us to get behind the baffles. The crud in the "clean" tank when we actually tipped it upside down was very scary. Just waiting there for some nice rough weather to come up and block everything!
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| Testing the new sail |
On Sunday we left the marina to try the new sail and the new shaft. The sail looks great except for some reason, which escapes me, they made the leech shorter than the last sail, so the end of the boom sits higher and now its more difficult to reach the topping lift. Bit of a pain and there seems no reason for it. We still haven't tried the reefs out to see how it sits with them in. The new sail is nicely cut and well made however and has a lovely roach in it which our last sail-maker failed to achieve with the old one. There was only 6 knots of breeze so it was really just an exercise. After bagging the main we motored down to Langerbaan to give the shaft and motor a run. Its only 4nm!. Well the shaft is fine. No vibration and no heating of the new flexible coupling. Good signs. We had no fuel issues. It was superb weather but the channel is narrow and has some shallows and a good current running so we motored back to the Yacht Club at Saldanha Bay to spend the night on anchor. We have done the reconnoiter now and next nice Sunday we will go for lunch to the Langerbaan YC which allegedly has an awesome buffet lunch. There was a really heavy fog on Sunday morning which prevented us leaving early enough to do the test stuff and stay for lunch.
Fuel tanks are out getting cleaned, serviced and modified. We are having an extra inspection opening put in each tank to enable us to get behind the baffles. The crud in the "clean" tank when we actually tipped it upside down was very scary. Just waiting there for some nice rough weather to come up and block everything!
