First Week Afloat

Firstly I want to thank you all for the fantastic comments left on my last post. For some reason I didn’t get my usual e-mail notifications so I’ve only now seen them all. You all know by now how much your support means to me. Thank you.

Well we’ve been on our mooring for just over a week now and generally the weather has been kind to us. That said we had a pretty rough night last Wednesday. A strong breeze got up during the night and when the tide turned the river got quite choppy. ‘Gleda’ decided to lay beam on to the waves, the mooring buoy kept going under the boat, and the Zodiac with outboard still attached tried to destroy itself against the rudders. Let’s just say that getting in the dinghy and getting the outboard on deck left me wide awake at 2 in the morning.

That little escapade didn’t really help with a shoulder/neck strain I picked up the day we got afloat. I thought it would just clear itself up but eventually Gail pushed me into visiting a Doctor for the first time in about 10 years. The super strong painkillers he prescribed are at least allowing me to sleep better and to keep working but I’ll be much happier when I can stop taking them and get back to normal function.

Today it has been roasting hot with little wind so I took the opportunity to have a play with the mainsail. I’m still waiting for a lot of the running rigging parts to be delivered so there was no way I could actually get the sail rigged properly but after so long waiting I just couldn’t resist hoisting it up there to see how it looked.

I’ve got to say it looked just fine.  Can’t say the same of the cover though, I’ll have to take another look at that.

Day by day ‘Gleda’ is slowly transforming into the sailboat she was built to be and I’m still aiming for the end of the month to get her moving. Numerous seemingly small and insignificant jobs have been ticked off and each one brings us closer.

A slightly bigger job ticked off today was getting the forward netting in place, it took ages to get right but it’s strong (I’ve bounced in it) and it’s added to ‘Gledas’ increasingly purposeful look.

Apologies for the infrequent posts recently, we struggle to get a WiFi signal out on the mooring and I’m not going ashore much while I’m working. I’ll get something up every week though as I know you’ll be keen to know whats happening.