Sailing Alison

Having completed the engine maintenance, I wanted to make sure that we were ready to sail as well as steam. This meant inspecting the rigging at the top of the mast, which in turn meant climbing the mast. As a climber you'd think this would be a breeze for me. However, when people ask, I always say that I have a healthy respect for heights. This means in practice that I find heights scary, but not to the point where I'm paralysed with fear. The previous owner of Alison put steps up the mast, so the actual climbing was not a problem. The only thing to sort out was how to secure myself whilst climbing. I decided to use my climbing harness, along with a Petzl Shunt attached to the main halyard.  The shunt is a very simple and versatile device. I've had mine 25 years and it's a testament to their design that you can still buy exactly the same model (with the same paint-job!) on a well-known shopping website. The great thing about the Shunt is that you can either u...

A couple of weeks ago I left you with a cliff hanger - I  had found a vacuum pump extractor that worked, I had successfully removed the extra oil that I had accidentally put in, but the glow plug solenoid was no longer working. Last weekend I finally got the chance for a good run at finishing the job. The first task was to find out why the solenoid wasn't firing. This ended up taking me a couple of hours, not because it was difficult, but because of the time it took me to get all the necessary bits and pieces together. My multimeter has normal probes, so to test that the push switch is working, you've got to press the probes against the two contacts on the back of the switch and then press the switch itself. This requires 3 hands! The answer was to get some croc clips and attach them to the probes. The problem was, I didn't have any and no shop in Scarborough had them either. I ended up having to drive out to Halfords to get some and even then they were hidden behind some...

I did my Dayskipper and Yachtmaster theory courses about 15 years ago. Now I'm master of Alison (still gives me a frisson to write those words), I need to turn theory into practice The plan currently is to spend the summer getting to know Alison, practicing all the things I'm not good at (mainly manoeuvring under power and all the stuff we should practice but we don't like Anchoring and Man Overboard). I'll take the practical in the Autumn. In preparation I've been looking at a way to brush up my theory knowledge. A bit of Googling (of sailing blogs, weirdly) led me to NauticEd . They have a very extensive list of courses, both theory and practical, an on-line resume (or logbook for those of us in the UK) and links to lots of hire companies. They offer two courses free as tasters: Sail Trimming and the Rules of the Road. I must say I found them both to be very useful and I even learned a couple of things about trimming. At the moment I'm figuring out wheth...

After sorting out the fuel filter and renewing the glow plugs, I really thought that the oil change would be plain sailing (ahem) but it's turning out to be very far from the case. You may or may not know that you change the oil on boats by sucking the old oil out of the dipstick tube (rather than draining it out through the sump plug - there generally isn't room underneath the engine on a boat. Arthur had told me that there was an electric pump on Alison, in one of the many compartments under the floor. I managed to find it, ran the engine for a few minutes, then tried sucking the oil out using the pump. After running the pump for a good 10 minutes with only a trickle of oil, I decided the pump obviously wasn't working and decided to think again. So that I would be able to start the engine again I decided to top up the oil. Unfortunately I put far too much in! This meant I wouldn't be able to start the engine again until I'd removed the excess oil, for fear of b...