Friday
I took Friday off to launch Blue Opal with K. Early train north to Malahide, with bedding etcetera for an overnight stay; we could potentially have brought Blue Opal back to Dun Laoghaire on Friday, but launches have rarely been an on-time thing. It was much easier to say “Friday is splash, Saturday is relax then sail”, and the weather was agreeable to this plan.
We were in Malahide by about 10 am, and I paid the bill for the summer storage ashore plus the parts and labour costs for all the works done by the yard. We wandered over to the boat, and found the mechanic on board doing the last bits that could be done before launching. As he was finishing up, one of the other staff wandered over and asked about launching, and before we knew it, the travel hoist was rolling up to put the slings on. We were scheduled for a noon launch, but the slings were on by 1057 and after a delay to apply antifouling to the positions that were blocked by the cradle, Blue Opal was sitting over the launch bay by 1131.
The travel hoist lowered the boat enough for myself and two of the yard staff to climb on board, and then it was down down down (not really, it was high tide) into the launching bay. The mechanic was one of the folks who came on board, and he did all of the inspections of the connections to the engine to ensure they were dry (especially the ones to the outside of the hull). He then proceeded to bleed the engine, and it started fairly easily.
Unfortunately, while the engine started easily, it didn’t stay running. This meant we were blocking the launch bay, so while the mechanic worked on the problem (basically, having to bleed all the way to the low pressure return), the other yard staff set up lines to pull Blue Opal out of the bay and on to the northern breakwater (where the above photos were taken from). So much smoother and easier than going out under engine, where prop walk can be a problem – I think I’ll ask for that launch process in the future.
The 3GM30F in Blue Opal can be a right bastard to get primed once it gets air locked / fuel starved. The mechanic had to work on it for at least 15 minutes, and he had small enough arms to reach past the engine to the lift pump lever. I think I still want to install something like the Facet solid state fuel pump, because it would remove the need to get into awkward spots just to push a small lever hundreds of times.
Once the engine started to run smoothly, we undocked from the northern breakwater, K tossing the lines aboard and holding the bow off as I reversed (taking advantage of the remainder of the incoming tide), and then taking the lines as I did a ferry glide on to the inside of the eastern breakwater, playing wind against the incoming tide.
We chatted with the mechanic for a bit; Ukrainian guy who’s actually moving to Dun Laoghaire having found somewhere there to rent. It’s a long commute, but possibly better than the commute he has right now. Shared our favourite bakery with him, and the location of a decent little hardware store.
A late lunch became the order of the day, and it was off to Fowler’s on New Street. We ordered beef stew, and received fish chowder – not really a big issue, and the chowder was cheaper anyway. We then spent the rest of the afternoon and evening doing a bit of tidying and cleaning, draining and re-filling the water tank, and just generally relaxing. I also replaced the Votronic solar charger with a Victron one (the Votronic was just clicking the last time I plugged the panel in), and even with grey skies, we were able to get some amps back into the starter battery.
Reheated pastries from our local bakery formed part of dinner, and this is when we discovered that the CampinGaz was about dead (it starts making a fluttering noise in the burner). Bugger.
Saturday
The weather forecast held, so the plan was to head south at the height of the tide, catching the ebb to give us the assisted push to Dun Laoghaire. First order of the day was tea, but with all three CampinGaz containers being empty, we had to wait until we went for breakfast at Cafe Provence. On return from breakfast, I confirmed with the staff of the marina that they had a 907 in stock, and after putting the chain markers into the anchor, we went ashore to get one. While ashore, we wandered over to the north side of the yard to watch the terns, gulls, and other birds at the rail bridge.
We were pottering about below while I tried to get the solar panel to behave again; full sunshine and it was reading 22V on the panel, but nothing into the battery. Turns out I’d put too small of a fuse between the charger and the starter battery, and it was blown. Replaced it with a larger one (10A) and it all woke up and the panel showed 100W being gathered and delivered to the charger.
As we were contemplating lunch, it started to get busy around us – we’d picked the breakwater because it’s usually a quiet spot (and it’s easier to get on and off of with tide than the finger berths). Turned out the fleet that had been racing that morning had been doing the Gibney Classic, and were all docking around us to go ashore to the pub for prize giving and lunch, before scarpering back out to sea before the tide dropped too far. That knocked Gibney’s off the list of lunch spots, and we ended up at Sette Pizzeria for lunch; lasagne for both of us.
Back on board, final checks, and off we went down the channel, heading for open sea and home.
We had noticed on Friday that there was a small boat on the south side of the estuary that looked like it was sinking and indeed on Friday night it seemed to be totally submerged. Saturday morning, there was no sign of it, and it turns out someone had moved it to a different mooring. It’s possible that it started sinking because it was put on a drying mooring, and the rising tide went into the boat before floating it. There’s seaweed on the rigging, so it has had a thorough dunking. Looks to be a Pandora of some description, like my previous boat Aslana.
We noticed the engine note drop as we were going along, but it recovered, so I attributed it to perhaps not all of the air in the system being bled out. Not serious enough to stop us from continuing on our way, so up sails (and AIS alerts going off while doing so due to the fleet coming out of Malahide) and bear away for the outside of Ireland’s Eye with a line over the stern – perhaps a mackerel or two would feel so inclined as to bite the shiny thing in front of them.
It was a very nice day for sailing, and indeed we both felt a bit too warm at times with the strength of the sun landing on us. Then it went grey and a little rain landed, and then it was sunny again. Ireland in summer, eh? We opted to rock-hop down past Howth under engine, trying for mackerel closer to shore. About half way down, we noticed a fleet of gaff rigged vessels “sailing” north. Some were under tow, others were trying to paddle (against the tail of the ebb tide), so we agreed that we’d go over and ask if the one that was paddling wanted a tow.
Tow duly accepted, we started to tow a Howth 17 to their home port; it was totally out of our way, but we had time and the day was nice enough. By this point, almost the entire fleet was under tow by various yachts, RIBs, and small motor launches, and we made way in a bit of a procession back to Howth. The engine continued to cycle down and up intermittently, which was concerning, but it was never down far enough to be “the engine is going to cut out” – a few hundred RPM drop perhaps.
With the Howth 17 delivered home, we turned around, hoisted the main, and set off for home once again. The rest of the sail was uneventful – used the new helm mic (a RAM4 extension mic for the main set down below) to talk to VTS for permission to cross the channel, K was able to dip her feet as the wind freshened (with a small craft warning coming into effect for parts of the country), and then on to a nice clean mooring. We decided that it was a good idea to just pack up and go home, so we did precisely that.
The engine investigation would have to wait.