After launching the boat at Endeavour Quay in Gosport we motored over to Osborne Bay. We spent Saturday and Sunday there waiting for reasonable weather to sail to Studland Bay near Poole. Osborne Bay was very relaxing, apart from lunchtimes when many boats drop anchor, including some who aren't very good at it!
This morning (Monday) we departed Osborne Bay towards Studland Bay. It turned into an eventful passage. Here's our track...
 |
| Zen Again Track |
And here are the usual stats...
- Distances/Speeds
- Route Distance = 30nm
- GPS Distance = 30nm!
- Duration = 3h30m
- Average Ground Speed = 8.5 knots!
- Weather
- Minimum Wind Speed = 10 knots
- Maximum Wind Speed = 25 knots
- Apparent Wind Angle Range = 20 to 120 degrees
- Seas up to 2m
- Overcast with rain showers
- Engine
- Total = 2 hours
- Driving = 2 hours
- And then it overheated!
And here are some new plots, created from our NMEA-2000 network using SignalK, InfluxDB and Grafana...
 |
| Overview |
 |
| Boat and Ground Speeds |
 |
| Heading and Course over Ground |
 |
| Apparent and Ground Wind Speeds |
 |
| Roll & Pitch Attitude |
More about how we setup the data recording and display in a future technical post.
We timed our run to catch the tide ebbing out of the Solent. We needed to get to Studland Bay before noon to avoid an approaching front. The advantage of the approaching front was the southerly winds preceding it.
 |
| Predicted Wind 0600 |
 |
| Predicted Wind 1200 |
It was pretty grey and miserable when we departed, but we had a nice 10 knot southerly. We tried our new yankee headsail made for us by Kemp Sails. It sets very nicely.
 |
| Osborne Bay Departure |
We motor-sailed down the Solent since we're still bedding in the new PYI shaft seal and AutoProp propellor. And we knew we'd need the motor for the Needles Channel. We had 2 knots of tide with us. By the time we got to the Needles Channel we had 2 furls in the yankee and 2 reefs in the main. The ground wind was only 15-18 knots but we were doing 10 over the ground!
 |
| Sailing down the Solent |
As we entered the Needles Channel we furled the yankee since the course was too high to sail. All went well until just after we passed over the outer end of The Bridge (the shallows W of the Needles). The engine over-temperature alarm went off. We checked for water at the exhaust and there was none. We shut down the engine after convincing ourselves the current would safely carry us out into deep water if we bore away to sail.
 |
| Towards the Needles |
 |
| Across 'The Bridge' off the Needles |
We unfurled the yankee to the 2 furls mark and were on our way to Studland Bay. The wind gradually increased to about 20 knots and veered to SSW. This gave us a nice close reach.
 |
| Approaching Studland Bay |
On entering the bay we furled the yankee and sailed in under double-reefed main. We rounded up, dropped the main and then dropped the anchor. Happily it 'bit' immediately and we could relax.
 |
| Entering the Bay |
During the afternoon the wind got up to 25 knots with heavy showers, and gradually veered SW.
Amusingly while cleaning up the boat we checked the bilge forward of the engine. Worryingly it had some sweet smelling liquid in there. Turned out to be from a punctured Hobgoblin beer can!
 |
| At Anchor |
Despite the engine drama the passage was fun. The boat is very slippery with a clean bottom and the new yankee is great. Hopefully we'll diagnose and ideally fix the engine cooling problem here.
Trust all's well where you are!
POSTSCRIPT:
Our engine is alive again. Yesterday afternoon we topped-up the coolant. We also looked up marine diesel engineers and chatted with Simon Caddy Marine Engineers. Simon was very helpful. This morning (Tuesday) we disconnected the hose at the sea cock outlet and proved it wasn't blocked. With the hose reconnected we started the engine and all is well.
We'll need to flush the fresh-water system to rid it of the overheating-induced suspended black particles (rubber we think). We had the same particles after our overheating incident in Reunion Island which we removed by repeated flushing in Port Elizabeth.
No comments:
Post a Comment