Petrella: First date

It would have been Mum's 75th birthday yesterday. It passed unremarked, although she is obviously not unremembered. Dad and I went sailing. 

We were joined by our mate, Mark Wiltshire, back from his travels around Turkey and Greece with the yacht "Amore", the lovely Hans 415 that I spent four weeks on with him last year. Aside from the pleasure of catching up with him and the obvious advantage of having an extra set of able bodied hands to handle lines, a pleasant forecast and an old friend aboard made it very hard to find any further excuse not to finally slip Petrella's lines and take her out for our first sail.

So we did just that. 

Dad and I arrived in Brixham for 0930 Sunday morning, having enjoyed an easy trip down of about two and a half hours to reach the boat. Mark joined us not much after that, and we all adjourned to the nearby beachside Breakwater Coffee Shop for breakfast.

A northerly 9 knots was forecast, with broken sunshine and and around 11°C, so we anticipated a bit of a chilly afternoon. But the cloud was slow to fill in, so the day felt surprisingly warm in the autumnal sunshine.

After a lazy start, showing Mark around the boat and catching up on things, we slipped our lines a little before 1300. As I backed her gently out of the berth, the wind and prop-walk conspired to push us towards our neighbour, so Dad stood by with a spare fender, just in case.

At the helm, I felt the slightest tickle of nerves as she pulled out of her berth and her bows finally cleared; although there was never less than half a foot between our hull and the boat next to us. I took her back down the aisle astern, unsure if the breeze and prop-walk would let me turn her to face bows out in the space available. Once out into the fairway, it was a simple enough manoeuvre to then turn her around in the extra clear space we found there then nose out of the marina's exit

Out into the main harbour, Mark pulled in the fenders and stowed our lines as I guided Petrella down towards the end of the breakwater and the bay beyond.

Clear of Brixham, we turned head to wind. Mark briefly took over the helm to hold her steady whilst I made my way to the mast to haul up the mainsail. The sail went up quickly and painlessly. We had a bit of initial trouble setting the main when I mistook the spinnaker halyard for the topping lift, but once I'd realised my mistake and released the right line, the sail set beautifully. By 1315, we'd stilled the engine and were under sail.

Beneath the lightly hazed sky, the blue waters of Torbay glittered, a small swell ruffled by the light wind pushing in over the far shore. We were set more or less close hauled on a starboard tack. I'd misjudged the position of the fairleads, leaving the working fairlead set much to far forward, so our progress and ability to point was hampered by a headsail with too much body and too tight a leech, but I set the starboard fairlead all the way back in anticipation of correcting the problem when we finally tacked.

With 7 or 8 knots of wind, Petrella tickled along quite happily at around two and a half knots. In such light air we'd have needed the engine if we'd wanted to get anywhere in any reasonable time, but with no aim other than to sail and no destination in mind we were perfectly content.

Actually, more than that. I don't think Dad stopped grinning once.

Approaching Torquay, we tacked before we lost all wind in the shadow of the windward shore. I took the easy job at the helm, Dad released the port jib sheets as we passed through the wind, and Mark hauled in on the new working sheet to starboard then Dad tailing the sheet for him as he ground in the last of the headsail on the winch to set us on our new tack.

One day I might replace the old traditional winches with a pair of self-tailing winches. But second hand on eBay a pair are sitting with a current bid of £800, and new they cost over £1k each. So it's not a priority for the near future.

I thought converting the rolling boom to slab reefing might be, but jury's currently out on that one, too.

Now pointing out to sea, with clearer air the breeze picked up by a knot or two. With her headsail now set properly, with 10 knots of wind she occasionally touched 4.5 knots of speed over the ground, making easy work of the light chop in the bay.

A little before 1500, now closing back in on the Brixham shore, we furled the headsail, restarted the engine and turned her head to wind to lower the main. The mainsail came down neatly and easily as I rolled the boom with the winch handle, feeding the halyard over the winch drum to control the speed of the fall. I'm still not convinced we will keep the arrangement, but can easily see why all three generations of past owners were so fond of it.

Back at the helm, boat under power, we approached the end of Brixham's breakwater. As Mark set about deploying the fenders, I knocked the engine down to tick-over to make life a little easier for him as he scrambled about the deck. A few moments later, an engine alarm sounded.

Knocking the engine in to neutral, I checked the LCD on the engine panel, and could see what looked like a coolant heating warning showing. I silenced the alarm. The temperature gauge wasn't showing anything of concern, so I double checked the exhaust was still spitting out water, and Dad went below to check the engine. Nothing felt or smelt like it was overheating below or in the engine compartment.

After a minute or two in neutral, the warning on the LCD cleared. So we re-engaged the engine and motored in behind the shelter of the breakwater, whilst Mark returned to deploying the fenders and setting the lines.

Approaching the marina entrance, I again knocked the engine back to tick-over, waiting for traffic from the fishing harbour to clear ahead. Again, the alarm went off, again the LCD showed a problem with the coolant system. Again, I silenced the alarm, drifted in neutral for a few minutes, and again the warning cleared.

We proceeded into the marina, and weren't troubled by the alarm again. There was a slight breeze blowing down the causeway, pushing us off our finger pontoon, so on the final approach to our berth, I left the turn in a little late, expecting the wind to have more effect than it actually did, and very much not wanting to bump our neighbour.

That left me without enough space for the turn, so I took some way off by kicking the engine astern, whilst the momentum of the boat continued to carry her on through her turn. As the turning movement began to slow, I slipped her back into neutral and then nudged gently her ahead again, Mark up on the side deck confirming what I'd already guessed, that my line was now good. She slid to almost a complete stop as we came into our berth, Mark stepping off onto the finger and securing the midships spring around the end cleat, giving me something to power against to hold her in whilst we secured the rest of our lines.

And so our maiden sail with Petrella was done; a short but very lovely trip of 6.6 nautical miles out across Torbay and back, over 2 hours and 34 minutes. Petrella is now absolutely, irrevocably ours.

The electrics on Petrella are a little different to Calstar. Our previous boat had a domestic battery and an engine battery, both separately isolated by individual switches and independent from each other.

Petrella has three domestic batteries and one engine battery, both systems with their individual isolators, but with a third isolator switch labelled "cross bank" that connects the two systems together. When the domestic isolator switch is horizontal, the system is off. When it's up, then the system is on. By contrast, when the engine isolator is down, the system is off, when it's horizontal the system is on.

Tidying up after having secured Petrella in her berth, I went below to switch the engine battery off, and found it already isolated. It seems that when I switched the battery on prior to starting the engine before leaving, I somehow, inadvertently switched the engine battery off, but switched the cross bank on, connecting the domestic batteries to the engine circuit.

A stupid, stupid mistake. And not one I intend to make again.

With the domestic batteries connected, the engine started despite no engine battery being in the loop. But I wonder if, in not having its own dedicated battery, and therefore having to share the load of the engine with the demands of the navigation systems off the same circuit, the engine couldn't draw or generate enough power in tick-over to keep the coolant at the required temperature, and therefore triggered the warnings?

In any case, there is also a bit of a shudder when moving between the engine transmission states (neutral to dead slow, dead slow to ahead and vice versa, and likewise neutral to astern) which neither Dad nor I nor Mark particularly liked, so we're going to find somebody to look at it for us and at the same time double-check and service the engine. It's not something I really want to take chances with.

But that was just a very small dent in an otherwise perfect day.