SEASON FINALE
Pulling his Jeanneau Cap Camarat out for winter has Jack reminiscing on last season’s adventures
Hauling the boat out for the winter brings back memories of the season gone by and one particular trip stands out. It was an evening in the late summer and we had family staying in a cottage in Corfe Castle. The chain ferry that links Sandbanks to the Isle of Purbeck was broken. So why not take our own boat and ask the family to meet us at Wareham?
The trip up to Wareham was actually a bit of a slog because it was blowing quite hard through the harbour and, being restricted to 10 knots as boats are in Poole during the summer, we took quite a soaking. As we closed in on Wareham and slowed into the lee of the river, the golden embers of the early evening sun began to warm our faces. We squeezed into the last spot on the quay and enjoyed a few river-side pints with the family before dropping our lines and retracing our steps past the eclectic collection of craft that have found a home along the lush banks.
As we emerged into the back of the harbour the breeze that had tormented us earlier subsided leaving us to cruise in comfort back to our mooring in Sandbanks before the falling tide cut off access. Glorious – and just the sort of last-minute trip we envisioned when we bought the Jeanneau.
Despite having a trailer we only tend to launch and retrieve the boat once a year because it’s not the easiest of tasks. You need a decent tide and calm conditions and because the slipway was really designed for hand launching dinghies and not heavy motorboats the whole car/trailer/boat axis is a little difficult. On this occasion, by the time we had rowed out to the boat, removed the covers, moved her to the jetty and aligned the trailer with the slipway we were already losing the tide. We couldn’t actually get the car close enough to the trailer to hitch it so we lashed a rope between the tow bar and the hitch and pulled the boat clear of the water before hitching the trailer for manoeuvring.
The boat looked in remarkably good nick given the exposure to the elements on a swing mooring and how hard it is to clean her properly. The hull wrap that we had fitted by Generation Graphics nearly two years ago still looks as good as when it was first applied. There was a fair amount of growth on the hull, despite Dad’s efforts to walk out and scrape off weed during a low spring tide. The pressure washer soon saw to that though and once we had cleared the interior of cushions and given her a wash it was time to tuck her away for the winter.
We’re getting some amendments made to the tonneau cover over the winter so a new full boat cover was summoned from Amazon. It should do the trick, though some missing straps meant we had to go Heath Robinson with the mooring lines to tie it securely in place.
That’s Kipper’s duties done for this season but we’re looking forward to more last-minute trips in 2020.