Jun. 17, 2005 - changing plans

The forecast has swung round a little, with a wind direction ensuring that trip down to Burnham wouldn't be just an early start, but would also be straight into the wind, at 4 to 5kts.... not my idea of fun....

In the meantime, Sailorman from the forum has suggested a BBQ on Stone Point beach...... now ordinarily, this would be out of the question for us, as we don't have a tender.... but........

Tuesday evening, I went to look at a secondhand one, and bought it!..... yes, our options are now truly opened up... it was a red 2.7m Plastimo, in pretty good condition...... only negative thing is that it has a slatted floor rather than an inflatable one, but I can live with that, especially as we only paid £170 for it.... it can take up to an 8HP engine... that'll have to wait.. its rowing for now.... but at least we can all fit in...!

So Stone Point on Saturday.... it'll be the first time i've anchored in 15 years, and the first time SWMBO has anchored full stop..... could be interesting.... at least I've checked the ground tackle.. its all OK... the winch works.... or at least the manual side does... haven't tested its electric motor yet..... and i've already marked the chain up at 3m intervals... we carry 20m chain, and 20m warp, so can anchor in aything up to about 10m with limited scope.....

The water at Stone point is fairly steep to shingle, sand and mud, so holding is pretty good.... but i'm going to have to think pretty hard about where to drop the hook to avoid swinging into anyone, or the bottom!

New diode has turned up, and its has completely different characteristics on the meter... near infinite resitance in one direction, and low the other.... i'll fit it this evening, and see if that fixes the charging prolems....