LESSONS LEARNED

1 DON’T SAIL WHEN TIRED

Driving long distances and working through a long list of jobs put a lot of pressure on me and ultimately led to me being very tired at the start of the return trip. Although this didn’t cause any huge problems it would have been better for me to have been well-rested.

2 CHECK COMPASS LOCATION

We had fitted two electronic compasses – one for the autopilot and the other for the chartplotter and radar. We discovered that they were mounted too close together, which is why we couldn’t calibrate them correctly. Once I relocated one to another location it was fine.

3 KNOW YOUR BATTERY HEALTH

The domestic battery appeared healthy as it was being charged by the shore power charger. In reality, it was badly sulphated and had little capacity which only became apparent when we started the voyage. Given more time we could have taken them to be checked or conducted a discharge test.

4 ENSURE WIRING IS SOUND

The burning smell we encountered was from the wires feeding 16 separate halogen spotlights in the headlinings. The wires were corroded and the extra resistance led to excessive heating and charring on the cables. Later we replaced all bulbs with LEDS and new cables, and the problem was solved.

5 GEARBOX QUANDARY

At speeds above 5 knots the gears couldn’t be changed as the dog clutch was severely worn. We managed to find two solutions – either slow the boat down before engaging the gears or just carry on anyway as it didn’t matter if we started the engine in forwards or reverse. We latterly had the clutch replaced by a main dealer who, after charging us thousands of pounds, managed to reverse the drive – but that’s another story!