We had to sail Tumi over to Guernsey for the export process, officially with a delivery skipper aboard. I am not against skippers per se, but not on my boat. The one we had wasn't as familiar with the boat as we were, and as a result we ended up with some issues. Firstly he wound the genoa car line on the electric winch and kept his finger on the button when the line had come to its limit and the line snapped. Not content with that, he then tried to cut through the eye splice that attached the line to the car block, and gouged a lump out of the gelcoat. Needless to say, we were far from happy, and have had these issues redressed today. I would not hire such a 'skipper' under any circumstances. We take far more care of our boat, simply because we have had to pay out for it, and not treating it as just a piece of work.
So, after officially receiving Tumi outside Europe (in Guernsey) we are now back in Plymouth having the few final fixes done including the above repairs. We had to have the engine checked after some juddering experienced at 2000 rpm a few days ago nearing St Peter Port. An engine check has been done today with a clean bill of health, so to celebrate I did the 50 hour service and changed the oil and oil filter too.
We commissioned the watermaker for the first time yesterday only to find that the sea water feed was not flowing, and the watermaker kept turning itself off. I checked the pipes, made sure that they were flowing, but still no feed through the system. This evening, I sussed it out. There is a 3 stage valve that feeds water from different sources into the primary filter. It didn't seem right that the recommended setting of the valve handle to the right to feed fresh water into the system to flush it only worked in the downward position, so logic got the better of me and I had to remove the handle, set it back 90 degrees to the left, and bingo! We have a watermaker that works.
The other thing that hasn't been operational is the Pactor modem for the SSB radio to convert radio signals into emails. A few exchanges with the services providers and we now have communications! Still some fine tuning to get it fully operational, but we are nearly there.
In terms of the sea trials, we are extremely pleased with the way Tumi sails. We achieve much faster sailing speeds and greater stability than Jay Jay in the same conditions, and so journey times should be much shorter and more comfortable. More time for enjoying the ports of call with a beer or few....
The Biscay crossing starts on Sunday, weather window permitting. Can't wait!