Scrolling back through my photos of the last couple of weeks and this one made me chuckle. It was unintentional; I was trying to catch a quick, surreptitious snap of my wife, Nikki, and my Dad, sat opposite me, enjoying breakfast at a café in Brixham overlooking the breakwater, beach and (the then) tranquil waters of Torbay.
It's an easy mistake: you double click the button on a locked Android phone to open the camera, but once the camera is open, a double click then becomes the shortcut for switching between the rear and front facing cameras.
We spent five very pleasant days aboard Petrella last week. The weather was too patchy to go anywhere, so we took Lottie down with us and concentrated on the various odd jobs that needed doing rather than taking the chance to sail.
Lottie is taking to boat life very well. Well, marina life, anyway. She seems perfectly content to be wherever we are. But away from the comforts and convenience of the marina, jury is still out as to how well we'd manage it. We've mastered getting on and off from alongside a pontoon, but I'm not sure how she'd cope with our tender if we didn't have that luxury. Or how the tender would cope with her.
With regards to getting on and off in the marina though, the first couple of days were a struggle. Basically, I'd pick her up and put her over my shoulder when embarking or disembarking. She tolerated it, but didn't enjoy it. And, to be fair, it's an undignified and perilous way to get on and off a boat for a 32kg German Shepherd and her human.
Petrella has a couple of meters of freeboard. And lacking a gate that a lot of the more modern boats of her size have, getting on or off requires climbing over the guard wires, typically using the shroud as a hand hold. And with one hand supporting the dog over my shoulder leaving only one hand for the shroud, by the end of day two it was becoming a little undignified and perilous for me as well.
The answer was obvious. I released the lower of the two guard wires, and once out of the way, Lottie was able to hope on and off under the top wire without any difficulty. So I need to be able to tension and secure the lower guard wire when we're at sea and underway, but need to come up with some kind of system where I can easily relax and release it when we're in the marina.
Five days in Brixham gave us plenty of time to get a few other jobs done on the boat. We removed and replaced a rusted, seized shackle at the foot of the mast that's the fixing point for the kicker. That required judicious use of the Dremel to grind through it. We also drilled a hole through the anchor that let us then pin it with a 10mm drop-nose pin securely on the bow roller, where it was previously only lashed. That also has the advantage of now keeping the tip of the 20kg Rocna a few mm clear of the bow, where before it was actually connecting and damaging the gel coat.
We also re-fitted the handle of the oven door, a "five minute job" that, unsurprisingly, kept Dad busy and entertained for the best part of a morning and afternoon. And we now have a pocket for a winch handle fitted in the cockpit. We also had the chance to have an engineer give the engine a once over. We're satisfied that the coolant warning light we saw previously was a consequence of my misconfiguring the batteries, and the shudder when we change transmission is perfectly normal; it's just the drive plate engaging.
Other than that, the engine runs sweet and was given a clean bill of health. We are going to get her booked in for a service, however.
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