Shake Down

Well the shakedown cruise is well and truly over now, but it did highlight some important items that need considering before our next holiday aboard. Nothing too serious or expensive thankfully but still some attention needed.

First up is the need to get the dinghy mounted to the stern of the boat. It quickly became apparent that the OH missed his dinghy on day one of the holiday. Last weekend we mounted the snap davits to the transom of Naughty-Cal and stuck the mounting pads to the dinghy. Now all that is required is to see if the two marry up successfully next weekend. We couldn’t do it last weekend as the adhesive needs at least 48 hours to set and doesn’t reach full strength for 7 days. So it will be a tense moment on Friday evening when we have the first attempt at hanging dinghy from the davits.

With the dinghy mounted we now need to turn our attention to the outboard engine. We now have two outboard brackets neither of which will do the job successfully, however we believe that we can make one that will work by mating the two together. Next weekend’s job is having a go at making the mounting brackets work. If it does work we then need to go onto the Trent with the dinghy and outboard mounted on the boat to check that Naughty-Cal can still plane. This is vital if we are to take the dinghy and outboard to Wells in a few weeks due to the limited passage time available.

Next up was cleaning out the engine bay. After our little excursion on the Trent beach and a quick repair anchored up on the Trent, the engine bay was full of mud and sand. Cleaning out the engine bay revealed that the last couple of times we have done this, we had forgotten to suck the water back out of the lower bilge area when finished. Slowly but surely we sucked out in the region of 100 litres of bilge water. This may have been part of the reason Naughty-Cal was a little sluggish onto the plane during the Trent trip. 100 litres of water sloshing around will not have helped matters any.

During the Trent trip the hour counter turned another 100 hours, signalling time for another service. We changed the two fuel filters whilst out on the Trent to try and put a stop to the sluggish performance. This had little benefit but does mean that all we have left is an engine oil and filter change and to change the supercharger oil. Hopefully the oil will have been delivered by Friday evening so the service can be carried out this coming weekend.

Lastly, is the boat needing a thorough clean both inside and out. With the recent dry weather have come a lot of airborne dust particles which seem to get everywhere. It shouldn’t take too long to sort out though. Certainly not as long as the major spring clean earlier in the year. The canopies desperately need a good clean but we need some decent weather first. The food store has already been restocked so will just need a minor top up before we leave with staples that we seem to end up eating a lot of. Tins of mixed beans seem to be a favourite at the moment; they seem to go into a lot of different dishes.

This little list of jobs needs to be completed in the next couple of weekends in time for our next holiday on board Naughty-Cal. This next trip promises to be one to remember. The Sealine Forum meet up in Wells next the Sea. This sleepy little fishing village won’t know what has hit it when we land with a big variety of Sealine cruisers.