Sailing with my son

16 nautical miles

My son Tim is over for the summer. He has finished his degree and next year does his PGCE. I inveigled him out today for a sail. Unlike my older son who likes boats, Tim is more a landlubber and his summary of the day was 'boring' but than hastened to add boring was not that bad!

The first thing this morning was to repair the genoa. The previous owner of King Malu didn't do very good maintenance on her for the last few years and the genoa was one of the places he cut corners: The sacrificial cloth which should protect it from the sun had perished and he hadn't replaced it. This meant that the edge of the genoa is somewhat sun perished. The rest of the sail is fine. We have added sacrificial cloth, but this is now really part of the sail rather than an extra, in that it is holding the edge of the sail together! Anyhow... what this means is that there is a tendency for the edge to rip and need repairing, which is what we did first thing this morning.

We then went down to the marina. Tim (sailing Tim rather than son Tim) took her out and used the new bow thruster to nudge her out. We tacked south hoping to go over the Xenobia but couldn't get that close to the wind and so tacked round to the north. We then put up the gennaker/asymmetric spinnaker and sailed well, doing 5 knots in 7 knots of wind. Actually we seem to be sailing King Malu much better now, and the whole day we sailed close to 5 knots sometime touching over 6 knots. Tim said that it would be great to get that speed on a long passage, as we would get about 120 miles per day.

Tim (son Tim rather than sailing Tim) said that he really liked the bimini which gives a lot of shade and with the open sides the wind keeps us reasonably cool.

It was a great sail.

I took her back into the mooring and having the bow thruster gave me much more confidence: Because we needed steerage we had come it with enough speed for steerage and usually had to use significant reverse thrust to stop her in the berth. If we got it 100% right it was impressive. If we didn't (and this was much of the time) then we would have some sort of difficulty.

So with the bow thruster I brought the speed right down navigating around and knew I could turn her as I wanted to nudging her into place without having speed for steerage. She behaved exactly as I wanted and though Tim said I could have done it faster I prefer slower. King Malu accelerates slower than she decelerates, hence I much prefer to have her slow and nudge the speed up than to have to use reverse to slow her down. Anyway, I was very pleased with the berthing and it meant Tim just stepped off onto the floating dock and took the lines to moor her. Much easier than two weekends ago!

Adding a bow thruster

With our new permanent berth being really awkward to get in and out from, and with both Tim and I having had problems berthing we decided that a bow thruster was needed, so we lifted King Malu and so we went down to see Costas at Damianou Marine and bought a Quick 4kw bow thruster.

We got him to arrange for professional fitting of the thruster tunnel and we ran the ancillary circuits and then he commissioned it. We added two extra 100 amp hour batteries to power the beast.

By the time it was finished it all looked very neat and because we did this in the summer when the boat yards are quieter we lifted the boat, got the work done, did all we wanted and returned King Malu to the water 7 days later!

Wind from the north

6 nautical miles

The wind was predicted to be from the south and gentle in the morning (6-8 knots) and stronger in the afternoon (12-15 knots). The intention had been for a gentle sail with two friends of Tim's - Paul and Panny.  However... when we got to King Malu we saw the wind was from the north, which is very unusual for this area and was 15 knots gusting 20 knots. We decided if it settled a little lower, maybe 10-12 knots gusting 15 we would sail, otherwise cancel for the day. Panny is not a sailor so unsettling her on her first sail would not be a great idea!

After about half and hour or maybe 45 minutes it did reduce so we decided to try a sail. Just as we were about to leave the motor boat next to us arrives to moor. They have quite a difficultly mooring so we are concerned. The new place we have for mooring is not good. It's really for smaller boats than ours, for instance the chain to which the mooring ropes is only about 1-2 metres away from the boat, to the angle is way to steep for us and we have to use centre mooring rather than end mooring. Actually there are no lines even attached to the chain - a couple of weeks ago Tim dived and attached one line, but is is temporary and we have made two new lines, but need to get someone to dive to attache them to the chain.

Anyway, back to the northerly and getting out of the marina... Our first attempt failed as the guide line for the centre mooring line had not been let go and we were therefore still secured to the pontoon. When we returned we changed the way this is secured so that we will see this line and not miss it. But... that was not all the problems... we don't yet have an inboard so manoeuvring is difficult. In reverse King Malu will always turn to port whatever you do with the wheel since the prop-walk on an outboard makes steering in reverse pretty difficult. We also have no bow thruster.

First problem was that the northerly was blowing the bow round as we reversed out. She just clipped the pole - fortunately just the anchor. Then trying to do a three point turn we had to fend off the sea wall, which broke one of our boat hooks. Still, we got out OK.

Out of the marina on the sea the wind was stronger as you would expect, it was 18 knots, gusting 25 knots. At least that's what the wind instrument told us. So I decided to hand steer as I could spill wind when the gusts came through rather than letting the autopilot hold course and giving our guests a rougher ride!

After tacking to come back the wind dropped a little, but was still gusting quite a lot. Coming back into the marina at just after mid-day it was 'like Piccadilly Circus'. Piccadilly Circus is a square in London where there is always loads of traffic coming from every direction. In our case there 4 or 5 boats coming out, one just ahead of us going in and a whole fleet of them behind us trying to get in.

With the new mooring position you have multiple turns the final one with very restricted space and a boat either side, that gives very little space, it's the fenders that hold us apart, there is no actual space! Too slow and you lose steerage, too fast and you have problems with the pontoon or another boat. Now remember we still have an outboard which has a long throttle cable so fine adjustments to speed are difficult. 

Let's just say I didn't do the manoeuvre very well. But thankfully didn't do any serious damage to us or any other boats or to the pontoon! Just after we secured the wind changed 180 degrees and so we were trying this just before a wind shift where the wind is unstable anyway.

Problems with the gennaker

17 nautical miles

Jacob and Marie are our boat cleaners - every week they go down and swab down the decks, clean outside and spend a couple of hours doing some polishing of the metalwork. Polishing the metalwork is an endless job and since it has not been done for many years needs a lot of hard work to return the stainless steel to looking bright and shiny. We have one requirement for this: Being teenagers Jacob and Marie must be together for safety. 

So, since Marie was away at camp this week, Jacob encouraged Anji, a adult friend who is staying with the family to come down with him. When he got back his Mum asked her how it was. Her reply was something along these lines, 'Well, it was rather stressful, lying in the sun on a yacht reading and watching someone else do all the work...' We thought she should see King Malu in her element and invited Anji to sail with us today.

First stop was round to the anchoring area north of the port for a swim. This time we anchored easily. Partly this was due to the wind and partly due to paying out the chain carefully so the catenary was always drooping correctly.

After the swim and a drink we set sail.  The temperature gauge was showing an air temperature of 31.6C so drinking enough to not become dehydrated is a critical part of sailing in the Med. The wind was light - maybe 6-8 knots to start with, from the south east, so we set the new gennaker and headed off towards Cape Pila. King Malu was sailing beautifully, I think we have got the knack of how to set the sails now. We were getting about 4 knots SOG in 6 knots wind.

During the morning the wind freshened to about 12-15 knots. Glorious sailing. Then time for a tack to return. To do this with the gennaker you have to furl it on the magic furl and then tack and then unfurl. We tried furling and found the bottom joint had seized. The gennaker should furl from the centre to the ends, but with the bottom seized it furled from the bottom up, leaving the top somewhat of a mess. We needed to drop the gennaker to the deck and get it stowed as quickly as possible. I started the motor and headed King Malu into the wind. Bad move. The top of the gennaker now spilled out balooning and making it very difficult to control. I took her 30 degrees off the wind. Now it was just difficult! We dropped the sail to the deck, Tim almost falling on the sail to keep it from balooning up and damage, then get it into the sail bag and below without any damage.

Whereas we had been thinking of sailing down and back up the coast for a bit, we decided we had enough and headed back to the marina under genoa and main.

Returning to our mooring also proved difficult, especially because there was an extra guest yacht moored alongside the sea wall. The turn that is normally difficult became impossible without a bow thruster or very still water. We ended up grabbing the boats either side and walking ourselves in. Definitely not an elegant way to moor and would have been even more difficult in stronger wind.

Then it was back up to Tim's flat to sort out the gennaker. We never did find out why the lower joint had seized, but it had seized solid. We sprayed everything with WD40 and made a note to remember this as part of our regular monthly maintenance.

The second thing we wanted to do was sew a sleeve for the rubbing strip for the dinghy. Mick watched the 'Larnaka men's sewing club' in action.

I think this was actually the longest seam we have done.

We then returned to the marina to fit it. Mick remarked that the dinghy was now looking very Greek, with the blue rubbing strip and the white hull.

The dinghy has been an ongoing project, and it's still not finished. When we inherited King Malu, she came with a wooden tender in somewhat poor state of repair. We cleaned it up and did some repairs to the wood, including adding buoyancy tanks. Then some friends from Alpha Divers fibre glassed and gell coated it.

It's nearly ready for use again as a tender, but still a little more TLC needed.

Sailing with the family Robinson

15 nautical miles

No, not Swiss family Robinson, but Northern Irish family Robinson were are guests today: Peter, Rachel, Sam, Bella and Naomi. 

The wind was low, 6-8 knots coming from the south east so we raised as much sail as we could - new gennaker, main, mizzen and mizzen staysail and headed south. Aim was to tack round sailing over the Zenobia, wave to our friend Chris who runs Alpha Divers, and then head out towards Cape Pila.

The Zenobia was a Swedish build roll-on roll-off ferry that got into difficulties and then capsized and sank on her maiden voyage in 1980. She now rests on her port side in approximately 42 metres of water and has been named as one the The Times top ten diving sites for wrecks in the world.

Chris, who, as I said runs Alpha Divers, is a friend of ours and the Robinsons and was out diving the Zenobia early in the morning. Early morning is a good time to dive and a bad time to sail due to lack of wind. Diving doesn't excite me, but Sam, the eldest son of the Robinsons has dived down to, but not into the Zenobia.

Alpha Divers do a lot of diving of the Zenobia and depending on diver experience and capability can even take divers inside the wreck: It's like a tour of a ferry - the bridge, the restaurant, Duty Free shop, chain lockers, life shaft, engine room and even the vehicle decks where you can see over 100 trucks still full of sunken cargo!

Last year Alpha Divers were dive support for a film crew making a film about the Zenobia wreck.  The Official Zenobia Documentary looks at the ship and its history - why did a modern ship on its maiden voyage sink? Was it sabotage from Mossad, the Israeli Secret Service, was it some sort of insurance issue or was it just a plain old technical failure? The documentary that Chris acted as dive support for asks and answers these fascinating questions. Well... I guess it's more fascinating if you dive the wreck!

Summer has finally arrived. It's hot and somewhat humid, though the humidity hasn't risen to its normal dripping wetness of the summer. That, no doubt, is to come.

Replete in live jackets the crew and guests lounge around the deck enjoying the shade of the bimini and the cool breeze coming of the Mediterranean Sea.

The wind picks up to around 12-15 knots and Bella and Sam are given a chance to steer the yacht, since we have dropped the gennaker and are now sailing on just genoa, main and mizzen.

Relaxing for Rachel is lying with a book, preferably a book resting on the stomach of her oldest child!

Lunch off the Dhekelia Power Station and it's time to head back. Well... not back, but to a mooring north of the port where a lot of yachts drop anchor and let their crews swim.

At 12-15 knots Tim and I are concerned about our anchor holding. We have two anchors - one that fits in the pulpit and the other that we have in the sail locker for overnight mooring. The one in the pulpit is a plough anchor. It is both slightly small for the boat size and tends not to set too well on the sandy bottom around Larnaca. 

We drop anchor in just over 3 metres of water, with 20 metres of chain. This should be plenty for a good catenery and hold firm, but strangely King Malu will not settle head to wind, but almost continues sailing without any sails up, dragging the anchor as she goes. There are yachts all around this anchorage and we are concerned about hitting them. We try three times to set anchor amongst the other boats and fail. 

Eventually we set the anchor in 2.1 metres of water but much closer in. This time the boat comes head to wind, but in 2.1 metres Tim and I are concerned about any anchor slip as we only have about half a metre under the keel and the last thing we want to do is ground the boat.  So everyone who is swimming is told the must come out of the water quickly if told to do so and I set an anchor alarm at a few metres. Everyone except Rachel and I jump in and cool off. 

A minute later and the anchor alarm goes off. I reset it. About 3 minutes later it goes off again. I cannot see a slippage - I am watching points on the shore I have lined up, but nevertheless it's enough to worry us so we call everyone in and head back to the marina.

We will need to find some way of securing the bigger anchor close to the pulpit so we can use it for day sails I think/

After the Robinsons have left Jacob, Tim and I fit a new bilge pump which is vey much smaller and will go right down to the bottom of the bilge and hopefully keep out bilges a bit drier.

We also fit the new table we have bought for the saloon. This is the first step in the interior cosmetic upgrade. I know a table is more than just cosmetic, but it certainly is a start to making the interior more habitable.

500 miles... new Gennaker... repaired bilge pump...

4 nautical miles

We had hoped to try our new gennaker yesterday, but what with moving berths there was too much on for us to get the time to attach the new gennaker which we got from Crusader Sails to the Magic Furl. So, first thing this morning we attached one end of the magic furl to the railing on Tim's balcony and then stretched it out right across his flat (it's a big flat) and with Tim tensioning it and Erika winding and me making sure it wound correctly we wound it onto the magic furl.

So what are the differences between a gennaker and an asymmetric spinnaker? Wikipedia comes to the rescue...

The differences that distinguish a gennaker from an asymmetric spinnaker are blurry; they are both high camber downwind sails. One difference is the amount of camber, which dictates the points of sail. A gennaker is optimal for a beam reach, while an asymmetric spinnaker is optimal for a broad reach or run.

So then down to King Malu and try it out this morning while the winds were low. But before that I went up the mast to fix some new spreader protectors over the ends of the main spreaders. The last thing we want to do is to damage this brand new sail!

We went out and tried unfurling and re-furling - it did much better than the old asymmetric we used to have, partly this is because it was cut to work with magic furl and partly because the old asymmetric was actually a cut down full spinnaker and partly because it is a brand new sail. Anyway we were very pleased with it. The shape is better, and it pulled better in 6-7 knots of wind we were getting more than 4 knots SOG with only the gennaker up.

We did try the genoa with it briefly but need to work out the lines better to try it again in the future. Yes, Malu Marine is the name to watch. It's the name of the company Tim and I have formed to supply specialist sailing equipment that is currently unavailable in Cyprus.

When we got back to the marina Tim berthed the yacht as he wanted to try in the new mooring. He took it about 1 knot faster than I do into the marina and round into the main waterway. With the extra turn before the new mooring we slowed down well on that, so I will do his speed rather than mine in the future. The old mooring had only two turns to slow with, the new mooring has five turns to slow, so we can come in slightly quicker, like many of the other boats in the marina. It's just I have this fixation with trying not to hit the floating dock!

We did about 4 nautical miles today which just tipped us over the 500 mark to 502 nautical miles we have sailed in King Malu. We are both becoming much more comfortable with her, so we expect the next 500 to go very much more quickly as we will try some longer trips.

Anyway, we then looked around for a small job to do before lunch and decided the manual bilge pump was to be that job.

The manual bilge pump has been leaking ever since we had the boat. I don't know if it was original or had been replaced, but the pump housing which takes the inspection hatch moved whenever you pumped it which in turn moved the inspection hatch which then leaked water into the engine room. Not a good idea!

We had tried replacing the inspection hatch but that didn't help at all.

About a year ago we had bought a new Henderson/Lavac Mark V pump for the for'ard heads since that had been leaking and we thought best to just replace the whole unit. But... although it claimed to be a Henderson/Lavac Mark V it wasn't the same size and the pump wouldn't fit. However, the inspection hatch did, so we replaced that from the new unit and the old one stopped leaking. Hence we now had a new Henderson Mark V pump with an old inspection hatch.

The Mark V bilge pump appeared well and truly fitted to the bulkhead so the thought of changing the whole thing was somewhat daunting. So what we did was replace the front housing from the old one that moved when we pumped with the front housing from the new one. This worked wonderfully... no more water in the engine room!

The 'new' Henderson Mark V pump we are still keeping as parts, though less than 50% is now new.

Another gentle day sail...

19 nautical miles

The day started early... well... early for me, at 7:15 picking up Tim, Sidney and Jacob and going to the marina. We needed to move the boat to a new berth. Hopefully this will be our permanent berth. If you zoom in on the map above you will see we left from one berth and returned to a different one. That's not totally correct, it's just we didn't do a spot location at the new berth before we left.

Anyhow, the new berth is at 90 degrees to the old one, which means that prevailing winds will now be on our beam instead of our bow. We'll have to wait and see how this affects us. Early in the morning, before the wind gets up is the best time for manoeuvring round the marina, so we tried both a bow to and stern too mooring. It's nothing like as easy to get in and out of this new berth, but no doubt it will become 'home' as we get used to it.

Sidney didn't come with us for the day but a business client of Tim's called Vladimir from Russia joined us for the day.

Some sailors like to tell of their horror stories. We like the nice days sailing and this was one of the best. 7-9 knots in the morning and 15-20 knots in the afternoon. Gentle and just the thing to unwind and the end of a hard week.

And... a great lunch out in the yacht near Cape Pila. What more could you want?