27th June: Seascow first sail!

It has been a very hot few days.  However temperatures were a bit lower on Saturday, most modifications after the trial rigging had been done,  and with a morning tide I decided to see how she would sail.  The only problem was that it was flat calm!

Still it took a bit of time to put the sail and outboard onto the Seafly and connect everything up.  I’ve removed the rope “mainsheet horse” from the transom so as to mount the Torqeedo as far away from the rudder as possible.  I’m going to padlock the motor onto the transom and hope no one steals it; without the battery pack and speed controller it is of no practical use and given the age, no significant value.

By the time Seascow was rigged there was a little wind from the south to southwest direction and with a 4m tide at 1211 according to Ayetides (ABP: 3.8m at 1227 ) I decided to tack upwind towards Northam Bridge. With the wind so light it was hard to tell, but the helm seemed very light and she tacked easily.  The Seafly seems balanced no matter what rig I put on her – but of course I did locate the forward mast step so she should be balanced with the Lightning 368 rig, presumably the centre of effort of the Scow rig is similar.

I got in a mess while scandalising the main at Northam Bridge having forgotten to tension the topping lift. Having been used to Seatern with the tiller pilot keeping her on course, the light rudder of the Seafly meant she spun around all too easily.  I need to sort a tiller tamer.  Motoring under the bridge at about 11am there should have been about 3.9m tide so 1.3m clearance under the centre arch.  I went under the next arch to the east and it looked lower than that, scarily so!  I decided not to put the sail up south of the bridge without a tiller tamer to give some control, so motored back under the central arch and hoisted the sail back on the northern side where there is more room.

I sailed back to where the Sea Cadets were out with a whaler, kayaks, and two Quest dinghies, but the wind was still fickle so called it a day and moored back at the jetty.   I then stowed the sail using sail ties to see how practical it would be to leave the rig on the boat.  With a sail cover I think it will work OK.