Jul. 31, 2007 - A Weekend With Stewart

Went over to the boat on Saturday morning with Stewart, mainly to bring all Wendy's kit back in readiness for her sailing course next weekend and the one after. She is doing Day Skipper practical with AT Sailing. I did my DS with them a couple of years ago. Even though Wendy already has an ICC, she still wanted to get some more "big boat" experience and also get to sail somewhere she has not sailed before - The Solent.

Whilst on the boat I decided I would reorganise the fire extinguishers. The boat came with two extingishers in the cockpit locker and one in the locker under the nav-table seat. We also had an automatic one fitted in the engine compartment and we fitted a fire blanket at the galley. However after some discussion on the forum, I came to the conclusion that the existing extinguishers were not in the best positions.

So I bought a fourth conventional extinguisher and repositioned them as follows:-

• one in the fore cabin
• one in the aft cabin
• one on the end of the saloon table, opposite the companion way steps; and
• one in the cockpit locker

The are all 2kg dry powder.

That took most of the afternoon, Stewart got some pracice in rowing the tender around the marina, we had a walk round the town, where there was a cycle race on in the street.

Sunday morning we tidied up the boat, sorted out the previously ruined bow fender lines, dried the tender out and stowed it away (it rained heavily during the night) and headed back to Calais.

The shuttle trip back home was a disaster - technical problems led to a 4 hour wait at Calais to get a shuttle back to Dover. As Wendy often says , the shuttle is okay when it works, but when it doesn't it is a real pain.