More rubbish weather

Well another dismal weekend weather-wise. The Eberspacher was definitely put to the test with snow on piling up a couple of inches thick on the mainsail cover at one point.

When it wasn't snowing/ sleeting or bitterly cold we had Gale force winds again for the first part of the long weekend.

So sadly Talia never left the pontoon.

We did a few jobs on board again (I am running out of things to do without some better weather to do it in). In particular we removed the ugly and serious fire hazard that was the oil lamps that dominated the main cabin. (Not to mention saving a couple of extra kilograms of weight)

We did manage to break the main engine hatch cover - the wood had just rotted through at the hinge but we made a repair with a block of wood, some bolts and epoxy. Ultimately the cover needs replacing anyway.

We came home a day early and passage planned our delivery trip home.

All eyes now on the forecast for next weekend and, weather permitting, our delivery trip "home".

Conditions on the pontoon

How many miles still to do?

Considering we have bought a new sailing boat, I seem to be spending an inordinate amount of time in the car on motorways! Over 1000 miles clocked up so far (and over 24 hours of driving / sitting in traffic) and so far, I've only been on Talia once when she was off her mooring and that was only for a couple of hours.

Still, the latest trip means the Eberspacher is serviced & seems to be behaving itself, the remains of the shelf around the bed are now in the garage at home, water tanks & fuel tank are filled, new toolkit is stashed, the anchor chain & rode are now neatly flaked into a flexible bucket and numerous other little jobs have been accomplished. The old adage that "there is always something to fix on boats" proved to be true again - arriving in the dark, I opened the engine cover to switch on the battery and the cover came away in my hand. After nearly 20 years, the plywood had rotted through at the hinge! So another thing to attend to when we come back at Easter. I can make a temporary repair but I think ultimately I will be making a completely new cover, complete with design changes (the cover also serves as a cockpit table when lifted open).

The following morning saw me halfway up the mast, tying off a halyard to the baby stay that had clattered and banged all night. The lower portion of the halyard had been taped to the stay and with the prevailing wind direction, that had proved to be sufficient. However, with the change of wind direction, it needed to be secured further. I can't say I recommend being up a mast trying to tie things up one-handed in F6 winds - at one point I had to 'hop' round the mast from front to back so I could face the stay and see what I was doing, whilst using the mast for support and hanging on with the other hand. At least mast steps make the job easier.

I got the outboard going this week so that needs to be taken over (I wasn't attempting to get that on board by myself - drowned outboards don't tend to work too well!) and I need to service the other one for storage as I haven't got it running yet.

So having got back at about 6:30pm last night, we will be setting off again some time this evening, no doubt to join thousands of other people in traffic queues, wanting to go somewhere for the Easter break. Since we are going to Talia via train for our delivery trip (to avoid leaving a car stranded in East Anglia!), we need to try and take everything we need in terms of clothes, charts, non-perishable food etc for that trip this weekend so I have yet another shopping list as long as my arm, plus another room full of 'stuff' to pack into the car....

So my carbon footprint for Talia is currently about the equivalent of driving to Edinburgh and back and it's not over yet. If all goes well, this will be the last round-trip to East Anglia - once she is safely in the Solent, the travelling should be a lot easier and our sailing hours vs car hours should get back into the right proportion :-)

Talia is launched

Friday night didn't start off too successfully. We didn't have a key to get any electricity or water, the loo wouldn't flush and Eberspacher (heater) wouldn't start so we had a cold night. Add to that we didn't sleep too well as the shelf is in the way of the king-size berth we wanted to use.

On Saturday the ex-owner, Bob, came down to see Talia (as yet there is no name on her as the old one has been removed but the new one hasn't arrived yet) who is now moored on the outside pontoon at Titchmarsh Marina. With the old owner present we instantly fixed nearly all the problems - turned out we did have a key we just didn't know it and the toilet does flush, you just need to know the knack and we brought a new battery which should hopefully help the Eberspacher when it is serviced on Tuesday.

We soon got the water tanks filled, the mainsail and lazy jacks on and the genoa set up and then went out for a little "sail".

There really wasn't much wind but at one point we managed 5 knots but you don't really notice the speed on this boat.

We did some practice manoeuvres. Using the Sillette leg (steerable leg) at an angle really helped the turning circle. Both Tamsyn and I brought her back to the pontoon without hitting anything - which was a relief!

We tied up at about 3:00 PM and said goodbye to Bob who had been really helpful in his extended handover and then sat down quite exhausted in our own boat all alone in what seemed like the first time. The enormity of what we had brought was slowly beginning to sink in.

And so then what did we do ?

We started ripping pieces out of our boat...

We had always planned to remove the shelf as it wastes the fantastic king size berth. But we had had such a bad night on Friday night that we couldn't wait.

Suffice to say that once it was removed we got a much better nights sleep on Saturday night.

Still have a little bit left to remove but this shouldn't take long.

We woke up to a howling F7/F8 Gale. It is testament to Talia that it was quite quiet and calm inside the boat but outside was a different story as this footage shows.

We spent the day hunkered down sorting through bits and bobs on board trying to get the boat ready for our Easter trip.

Got some nice (ish despite the weather) photos of Talia alfloat.

Potted History of Prout Catamarans

So I thought it was worth delving into the history of Prouts for those not so familiar.

Francis and Roland Prout were at the forefront of the development of the catamaran as a successful cruising boat.

Left Francis Prout in 2003 - Right Francis & Roland Prout






They came from a Canoeing background and some of their first cats were simply 2 canoes strapped together.

As the boats developed they became more sophisticated but the basic catamaran form was still ground breaking for the Western world in the 1950s.

For those interested, plenty more history can be found at the BBC and Multihull Maven

This is definitely a potted history of the (modern) Prout catamaran - the original concept goes back to the 5th century AD - more can be read on here.

It was only in the 20th century that the Western world re-discovered what other cultures around the world had known for sometime. Some of the Prout brothers first experiments were with a cat design called Shearwater which led them to win every race going including the 1954 Burnham regatta.

It was this success that led them to build a very successful business selling a series of Prout cruising Catamarans from 26 feet to 50 feet. Many of these have circumnavigated developing a reputation for solid and dependable cruising boats way before catamarans became as popular as they are today.

I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that the dependability of Prout cats was a significant factor in overcoming much of the early prejudice against cruising catamarans and contributed to making catamarans in general the force to be reckoned with that they are today. Many circumnavigations (one of which in a 33 just like mine has been published in a book) and Round The Island wins also enhanced the Prout reputation. (1968 and 1998 RTI wins in Prout Snowgoose's or is that Snowgeese?)

Sadly the good times didn't last forever, ultimately after a series of corporate takeovers and mismanagement Prouts went bankrupt at least twice (!) and finally out of business on in February 2002. There is a lot more written on the downfall here.

The story didn't quite end there though.

In 2001 Broadblue catamarans was created. The old managing director of Prouts, Richard Underwood moved to BroadBlue as part of their leadership team and miraculously the BB 385 looks somewhat familiar to the Prout 38 one of the last models of the "old" Prout line.

Broadblue seems to be making a success of things but faces a large challenge from Fontaine Pajot, Lagoon and other modern producers to win back the customers and market share lost during the mismanagement of Prout in its dying days. But the design of my Prout can trace its heritage back to these first ground breaking craft.

Loading up

So I have recently been really pleased with myself for all the unwanted junk I have been unloading from Talia that the previous owner left on board. That is until we started to pack up all our stuff ready to be loaded on. Makes rather a large pile doesn't it ? I am somewhat worried about our water lines !

So the other good news is that yard have promised, barring high winds to launch her on Friday. So all coming together hopefully.

Other activities - fender socks on order (the fenders we have got are going a bit goey.) A new set of flares from Sail GB, sea cock grease, some Sikaflex for sticking the peeling edges of our treadmaster down from Marine Store and some fire extinguishers all ordered online at Budget Fire. What did we do before the interweb ?

Fed up of antifouling now!

After a long stint of antifouling on Sunday which was interrupted by having to help Mark remove the rest of the Questina lettering from the starboard hull, I went back to Walton on the Naze on Wednesday morning to continue the job. The plan was to stay overnight and try to finish antifouling on Thursday so we could confirm the clean/polish and lift-in with the yard to have some chance of launching a week before Easter.

She is ours !

On Saturday the 1st of March 2008 we bought our boat ! Questina III is ours! - except that she is no longer called Questina but more of that in a minute.

And to prove it, here is a photo of us toasting our new purchase in our new saloon.

(I am not sure the “tippy boat” word saloon is the right word for what is a massive spacious apartment!)

Bob and Brenda, the previous owners spent the morning with us and went through many of the systems and completed a mini handover. As she is on the hard at the moment Bob has promised to return in a couple of weeks and help us rig her on the water and go over a few things again. This will be much appreciated by us. There was so much to cover we will need a second bite of the cherry.

We had actually paid over the money the day before but had to meet Bob in person to handover the ships papers. Banks don't work on Saturdays, or at least not properly and although we were taking a slight risk we needed to get the handover complete in order to try and get her in the water for Easter.

We spent the afternoon

(a) in complete shock

(b) starting to sort out the inventory (sails, boom etc) that was currently piled across the saloon. There is still loads to sort out but at least by the end of the day we had organised things into the forward single berth and could sit round the table and even make up a bed.

Which Pippin promptly went to sleep in !

We also tried out our Eberspacher heater - we were originally unsure as to whether this was in working order or not but it seemed to be OK after we charged the batteries. We have booked a service of the heater to make sure as we will need some warmth on our early season delivery trip. I am not sure if the battery is 100% but at least this will be an easy thing to replace if we do have a problem.

We also introduced ourselves to the Harbourmaster Steve, a more pleasant and helpful guy you could not hope to meet. But he did warn us how busy it is before Easter so we have a challenge to try and get launched on time.

And then after a meal at the Titchmarsh Marina restaurant and a bit more champagne we went to be bed on board our new yacht. Quite early in fact and exhausted due to getting up so early to travel round from home and the sheer excitement of the day.

I was glad that we were plugged into mains and had a heater in place as it was quite literally blowing a gale outside and the noise in everyone else's rigging and slapping halyards made quite a racket.

But it was quite safe and snug inside. We definitely need to do some alterations as the fantastic queen sized berth on the bridge deck is currently partially blocked by a shelf. But I wasn't going to get out the jigsaw on day one of ownership !

On Sunday we were up and about and Tamsyn discovered one of the major disadvantages of catamaran ownership - antifouling two hulls !

We had booked a wash and polish of the hulls via the Marina and whilst we were looking at the hulls we realised that the lettering of the name was in quite a state. So although we weren't originally planning to we started to remove it.

At this point we realised there was no longer any reason not to change her name. We never really thought "Questina III" was a cool name but were reluctant to change it due to corrupting the paper trail of ownership and the effort of re-lettering the hulls. But now with them halfway removed there wasn't really anything stopping us so in the car on the way home we picked a new name.

And the name is Talia.

Unique in the UK but several around the world.

And apparently meaning something like "Heaven's dew; lamb" - but we just like the name !

(And at only five letters it will be easy to fill in on forms)

The lettering was a pig to remove and we didn't pack it in until about five with all the names gone (well mostly removed) from the hulls and 2/3rds of the first coat of antifouling completed.

With M25 traffic we arrived home for 8:30 PM, exhausted but so happy.