The crane arriving ready to lift Bryher Rose into the water, unfortunately in doing so it smashed the mast head light, bent to wind indicator and broke one of the lazy jack lines for dropping the sail easily.
As a result Sam had to go up the mast in the Bosun's Chair and see what damage had been done, looks like the mast light will need completely replacing so he will have to go up again as we haven't got a spare or replacement yet. Whilst he was up there he re-threaded the lazy jack line that had been broken that I had made a replacement for. We were helped by Barry who was moored up next to us and had a neat little gadget for getting up the mast. It fits over one of the halyards and has a cleat that grips the rope. So as you go up you pull it up behind you and then can stand on it as the cleats grip whilst the halyard attached to the Bosun's Chair is pulled up. Much less hassle than winching all the way up in the chair and it appears safer too!
Just before we had tea I spotted something in the water nearby and realized it was in distress and in danger of drowning. So I jumped in the tender and quickly rowed to the rescue and fished out a female sparrow who was freezing clod and soaked and flopping about. She was so shattered that when I first got hold of her she just sat on my finger shivering looking at me. I wrapped her in a paper towel and blew her dry and when she started to try and bite me having recovered I let her go and she promptly disappeared into one of the waterfront restaurants.
Barry had a very appropriate cartoon relevant to Sam's exploits up the mast earlier.
We ended up moving the boat late evening as it was dragging the anchor in the swell from the passing ferries. Last night when we moored up we were afforded some shelter as we were alongside another boat but that moved this morning. We started to drift but reset the mooring lines and the boat appeared steady but when the wind got up late afternoon she dragged and hit the quay. Not much damage but we will need to do a bit of glass fibre repair to the bow tomorrow. I think Sam is considering swapping the stern anchor as well for something like a decent Danforth with a bit more holding capabilities. What with that, the engineer coming to look at the alternator to see if it is charging the battery and the need to maybe buy a spare battery if the one we swapped is shot it could be an expensive day. The joys of boat ownership! Some good news though a boat moved off the other side of the quay so we quickly swapped places for a more sheltered berth alongside instead of bow to.
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