Monday 2 May 2016

British Virgin Islands - Preparing for Departure

Hi everyone,
We have now just about completed our preparations for sea.  We had a nice quiet night at Peter Island last night then this morning we resumed the boat work…

  • Used ATN MastClimber to check the rig - found a badly chafed headsail halyard
  • Freshened the nip on the headsail and also mainsail halyards
  • Changed or charged batteries in everything electrical

Chafed headsail halyard

The headsail halyard chafed where it sits in the mast-mounted guide for the furler. The guide ensures a good angle  to the furler's upper roller assembly but obviously likes chewing our halyards.  With or without noticable chaff I like to freshen the nip on all halyards regularly to spread any wear around.  We last did so in South Africa.

With the above work complete we weighed anchor and headed towards Sopers Hole.  Within minutes we were in a tropical downpour - glad I wasn't up the mast when that came along!  We used the short passage to try out our new Pelagic Autopilot ram.  It passed with flying colours and will be our primary ram for our North Atlantic crossing.

Pelagic Autopilot ram

We arrived at Sopers Hole just as the rain was clearing.  Our friends on Vulcan Spirit are here and came over to visit.  We both plan to depart tomorrow unless the weather forecast deteriorates.  Later we went ashore for a final shopping mission, buying mainly fresh fruit and veg plus a bottle of champers for our next landfall.

Dinghy dock and Pussers Landing at Sopers Hole

We plan to consider the weather outlook with the Vulcans over a rum punch and burger at Pussers this evening.

1 comment: