Preparations before Dartmouth Departure

Well, it’s been so long since we wrote anything and so much has happened, it’s difficult to know where to start, but I guess the best place to begin is after all of the trouble we had had with the old outboard, it was decided that we took a trip to the local outboard engineers in Kingswear and find out what was available to replace the old one that was going to be ongoing trouble if we left it.
So £700 lighter we carried away with us our new yamaha 4hp motor. Its pretty flash though, and although its really eaten into our funds, it was the right thing to do, especially as we are at the mercy of much stronger tidal streams and the last thing we want is for one of us to get sucked out to sea with a tempremental outboard.
The next thorn in our side was of course the boat underperforming in terms of its speed, and the log was’nt reading correctly. We knew that the cause of this was having a dirty hull, so had arranged to use Dartmouths scrubbing grid for the day.
For those of you who don’t know the ins and outs of drying out let me shed a little light.
Tide comes in, boat is fastened onto the quay wall. Tide goes out, boat is left there standing on its keel, ready for scraping/painting whatever. Tide comes back in again, boat is unfastened and drifts off. Heh, but its not always that simple, if you get it wrong, you are juggling with the possibility of causing major damage to your boat, particularly if you’re unfortunate enough to allow the boat to fall away from the wall.

So, there we were, starboard side to the quay wall early morning padding around the deck with lines running ashore to hold us in position as the tide turned. The crucial moment came when Sunnyjim touched bottom and with the sides of the hull fendered off, Sunny jim came to rest.
AS morning wore on we were found scrubbing away at the barnacles and slime whilst holiday makers ambled past soaking in the charm and the sounds of the coastal town.
We even had time to give her a new coat of anti-foul which was particularly pleasing as it saved us the hassle of drying her out for a second time, although it was a mad dash at the end to get the last of the paintwork on, and Clare and I were found shin deep, splashing the last of the paint on as the river began to swell. Still, we floated off at high water pleased with the hard days work and immediatlely noticed a huge difference in the boats performance.
Later that evening we rafted alongside Tony, a friend of ours from Southampton who had invited us to dinner and discussed our options as to where to go next.