Party, fun & games, and a bent stopcock

Party, fun & games, and a bent stopcock 

Froo Gal, Copyright (c) 2015, All Rights Reserved

After a couple of weekends of chores, we took Froo Gal to the beach, anchored off and had a beach party. BBQ grill, coolers, more wine than we could drink, more food than we could eat, good friends, sunshine and a gentle breeze made having fun easy. Even the dodgy outboard motor worked... just.

Crawling into our bunks later than normal in the early hours of Sunday morning, we were out like lights and did not worry about being on the hook. (It normally takes a few nights at anchor to get comfortable.) Two of our friends had arrived several hours earlier in their small keel boat and moored close to us. We offered them a spare cabin for the night and they gratefully accepted after the party -- much better than camping in an open cockpit in a choppy anchorage. Their seamanship was excellent -- over-sized anchor with plenty of warp down; closely observed to check she was not dragging and by 0500 she had not moved an inch. However, when I got up at 0730 she had dragged 200m down to a very large metal buoy -- a channel marker.  Was she damaged? I could not quite see... it did not look good.

Rousing the guest crew and quickly donning life jackets and grabbing a couple of spare mooring warps my friend and I jumped into the tender, fired up the dodgy outboard and went to rescue the keel boat. As it turned out, she was just past the channel buoy and had not hit it, but she had the anchor warp around her keel, so had been lying beam to the wind and tide, making he look as if she was lying on or wrapped around the large buoy. Luckily she had completely missed it and taking the tension of the anchor line by towing her with the tender, we managed to unravel the mess without hitch and got back to Froo Gal for a light breakfast, without running out of fuel for the outboard -- something that had been nagging at the back of my mind during the 'rescue.' On arrival back at Froo Gal I refilled the outboard's tank and realized that its extended use and new fuel had flushed it through and it was running much better -- a silver lining to the fun & games we'd had before breakfast.

Bent seacock, Copyright (c), 2015, All Rights Reserved

Somewhere along the trip I managed to 'close' a seacock, except that it had seized and all I had done was fold over the aluminum handle. We had known was getting a bit sticky and would probably need replacing.  It's now the job at the top of our to do list! 

It rained much of Sunday, so we went back to the marina, hid in Froo Gal and tidied up the boat -- it was fun of sand.  The left over salad was full of sand, so was the bread, most of our clothes, and our hair. Those huge marina mooring fees sometimes seem value for money when you grab a hot shower in a shower room with a heated floor!