Anne, Paul and Mark set off early to get down to Saxon Wharf in time to launch Tin Tin at 9 a.m. the team already had Tin Tin in the slings when we arrived towing the new tender.
We tested the bow thruster with its new sealing plate, which worked well and had reassuringly large bolts holding it in place.
While Tin Tin was dropped in the water by the big boat lift, our little tender was hoisted by a gigantic fork lift truck and lowered in alongside a pontoon. Mark and Paul both have forklift licences and really fancied a go!
The new bimini seems just right, and I hope it will do a good job of keeping the crew on watch cool and dry.
Anne kindly delivered the trailer back to its owner while Mark & Paul set off down river to slip under the bridge before the tide rose too high, and sailed down the Solent to Gosport.
On route the engine was very smoky and ran oddly, and so we had a couple of engineers from MarineTech Engineering to meet us join the dock in Gosport to look it over and service it. We were also met by Marine Electronics to get the Navtex going again - it had been disabled all round Britain denying us automatic reception of weather forecasts. The cause turned out to be a tiny stray wire in the antenna cable which had occurred when the SSB radio was installed.
No comments:
Post a Comment