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.