Summary

Early in 2008 I bought a little, old wooden Folkboat called Valmik. I was going to spend a few months on repairs and begin sailing her around Europe, with Australia being the final destination. As my knowledge of boats improved, so did the thoroughness of the restoration. I decided to become very involved in every aspect of construction, doing almost all of the work myself: making my own sails, doing the fit out and all woodwork, splicing my own rig and wiring in the 12 volt electric circuit. Self-reliance, I suppose, is the goal. Follow the link to my photo albums for a detailed documentation of the work and some videos.

For a long time now, I have been striving to achieve my goals and begin an adventure. I had planned to complete a circumnavigation of the UK and Ireland in the summer of 2015 with my wife. Unfortunately, this will not be possible and I went back to work. Valmik is ready to sail, however, and I am finally in a position to start enjoying her for what she was designed for. Of course there is a never ending list of modifications and enhancements with a small section for repairs. I will be sailing as much as possible and documenting my adventures on this blog.

My plan is to build up to a epic solo sailing Adventure.

Saturday, September 24, 2016

Sunny September sail

We are planning to have a long weekend away for our one year anniversary, but Kate suggested that before we leave we go for a quick sail. Good on ya darling.


We went down to Valmik and she appeared to have quite a lot of growth on her bottom.


After harvesting the seaweed farm I also found our lunch, one prawn and a mussel. Actually we had some of Kate's lovely organic carrot cake instead.

With so much weed on the bottom I was a bit nervous about sailing valmik thinking she would be very slow. It was also a bit breezy with a force six forecast. Anyway we found the nerve and had a really lovely sail. We put the second reef in before we left. The old seagull outboard fired up on the third pull and was very smoky, I shut it down, it would be our back up. I have wanted to test our skills for a while now with sailing off and onto the mooring buoy without touching the outboard. I was a little bit nervous as we had not done any close maneuvering for some time. We worked really well as a team. I did run forward to help Kate with the mooring as it was the first time we had used our mooring hook and I was not sure if I had lined Valmik up well enough for Kate.

Here are three short videos for your enjoyment. I have attached the camera to the boat for these and I need to learn how to edit them as they are very basic. The wind sound is very loud.











Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)