Seadog of the month

 

The highlight of an otherwise rather dud end to the month has been Ozzie's achievement of the Practical Boat Owner "Seadog of the month" award. Richly deserved, well done Ozzie. Paul Davison, a UK SCAMP builder, kindly sent me the page.

The weather has been mighty unsettled and we have been lucky to get one good sailing day a week, and life has organised itself so that something has come along to stop me sailing on that good day.  

I did get out from Black Rock for a bumpy sail with Gavan as crew and Peter in Pitthirrit for company. Black Rock ramp is exposed to Westerlies and was horribly weedy - I managed to put a dent in the bow of Anjevi, coat the trailer in sticky weed that took hours to wash off, and make a hash of retrieving the boat. I won't be hurrying back to Black Rock. But Peter made a nice video of the sail.

I got out for a solo sail a few days later, to test a new arrangement for the third reef.   The reefing worked fine, but somewhere along the line the boom must have hit the pole I had just replaced that I used to fly my WBA burgee from the rudder. Both pole and burgee vanished somewhere into Altona Bay, another sacrifice to Neptune. Hey ho.  I have been using the down time to do some work on the SCAMP.  I took the rudder out and tried some re-faring after long consultations on fluid dynamics with my brother Mike. Fingers crossed I have fixed the vibration. And I patched up the ding in the bow from the encounter with the concrete pylon at Black Rock jetty, and added a new hatch rear starboard side cockpit seat so I can keep anchor rode there. 

I am laid low at the moment with some truly nasty bug, not Covid if I am doing the test right, but it feels like it. Hopefully I can bounce back, the weather will improve, and I can get some sailing in over October.