When I wrote the last blog in August 2014 I had no idea that it would be getting on for two years before posting the next one. Perhaps it is just as well that I was ignorant of what was to come or I probably would have resigned my post as Ship’s Dogsbody.
The past.....
Severn Swan was hauled out of the water and propped up in Tom’s Shipyard
in Polruan in October 2014…. and spent a very long time there. To cut a long
story short, we discovered that the prop shaft (all 4 metres of it) was bent at
the very end where the prop is attached, which kind of explains why we hadn’t
noticed and also why we chewed up so many sets of bearings. The water maker died
soon after commissioning and then was lost for a year after having been sent to
the manufacturer for repair. The solar panel controller died and was repaired
under guarantee. Martin decided that he wanted the engineering
challenge of building a wind vane for steering (which took months to complete
but kept him happy and out of the way). The rudder came off again when it was
discovered that the pintels were out of line (which explains the stiff
steering). Not unexpectedly a lot of the varnish work has degraded over this
period despite covering the whole deck area with tarpaulins so here we go again
with the varnishing….Most of the bedding, galley equipment, clothing and food
(and a lot more besides) was carried up to the house for overwintering (x2
winters!). Hippo-Thomas too called it a day and took root on the sofa up at the
house in more comfortable surroundings (for those who don’t know Hippo, see our
website – www.schoonercharter.com). He
doesn’t want to be skipper when it is too boring, too cold or too dangerous –
which accounts for a lot of the time actually.
The present....
What
happened next…
We were
lifted back into the water on Friday 13th May 2016– unlucky for
some, but our lift was very smooth and without incident or undue stress (thanks
to Alan and Paul Toms and team) although we’d been stressed out for weeks just
thinking about it.
A last dollop of antifoul before she goes in |
And so we're off for more adventures!
Sea trials
Martin has posted aYouTube video of our little outing (thanks to Dave and Sarah for this):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22M4RWcNZUw&feature=youtu.be