Moonshine Gets New Stuff.

Moonshine got a few new bits and bobs over the winter, a new steaming light and wind indicator for the mast and a couple of new ensign halyards, but not very much.

This week however, the incredibly ratty old sprayhood was finally replaced. The sprayhood really needed replacing when we bought Moonshine and over the past six years it's become more and more of an embarrassment.

I went down today to take a look and do a bit more fettling and was greeted by a picture of great beauty.

It really does look the business. It's soon to be joined by new dodgers, too. We brought the old ones back to put in the washing machine so that they'd be nice and clean to go with the new sprayhood and it turns out that the lettering was more fragile than it looked. I'll put an order in tomorrow.

Apart from checking out the new sprayhood, today's other task was to put a coat of white deck paint in the cockpit to cover the custard yellow. That's now looking pretty good too.

There's still a fair amount to be done, but the plan is to have her looking presentable this summer instead of the being the slightly tatty old boat she's been for the past couple of years.

Next step more painting and replacing the old handrails....

Scuttlebutt to Poole. Almost

Our first trip of the year. A bank holiday cruise to Poole with other YBW Scuttlebutt forumites. We set off from Chichester on Thursday with barely a breath of wind, motoring down to Cowes as a staging point to the Friday meeting point in Yarmouth. Unexpectedly met up with seven other Scuttlebutters in the Lifeboat inn, so had a pleasant evening there. Yesterday we made the short trip to Yarmouth drifting down with the tide more than actually sailing. Found immediate advantages to cruising in company - lots of willing hands to help with docking. Very pleasant dinner in the Kings Head, with the forecast higher winds being felt as we left the pub. Quite a bouncy night on the pontoon as Yarmouth is fairly exposed to Easterly winds. The forecast was for the winds to die down overnight, but that hasn't happened. Sadly, Poole is going to have to be postponed yet again. We'd get there with no problem, but returning would be a slog into the wind. Ah well, a lazy day in Yarmouth then....

How Long?

I knew that we'd been remiss in keeping this up to date, but three whole seasons is a lot.

The weather has a lot to do with it. It doesn't seem like we've had a decent summer since 2007, so there hasn't been much to write about. Because of the poor summers and the amount of time we were spending on other stuff,  we decided to sell Moonshine at the end of 2010. Here's the advert. We had a few people kicking tyres, but nobody put in an offer, not even the two blokes who poked around in every corner and asked every question in the book for a good two hours, then didn't bother to get back to me.

In September we had a couple of good weekends and decided that actually we rather like having a boat and made a decision that this year we'll use her more.

So, here we go. It's the beginning of May 2012, the weather is as awful as ever, but we're determined to go sailing this summer!