Well, after 7 years sailing Shearwater it’s finally time to take the last sail and put her up into brokerage. Joining me on this momentous occasion was Andy and Steve my nights buddies from work and Matt. We slipped the mooring in Chichester Marina and make our way through the lock for the last time into the harbor but not before fun and games getting the engine started. It seems my batteries may be on there last legs even after 24 hours of charging. Oh hum, they should get further charging on route…..or so I would be led to believe.
3 hours out of Chichester harbour past Spithead the engine died for some mysterious reason. Ok, this called for an investigation into the root cause……..right first pass this sounded like a fuel issue so I checked we had enough fuel in the tank. Yep, we had just under half a tank of diesil, next was to check that we didn’t have water in the primary fuel filter….nope, that’s ok….next check we haven’t got an air lock in the system. This was checked by opening the bleed screw on the seconardy fuel filter using the manual pump lift……. mmmm nothing. By then it was getting dark and the batteries were also nearly exhausted, so Matt and I sailed onto a pontoon at Cowes Yacht Haven which is a first. We then made our way through to the pub for food and beers. Apart from the technical issues this was a fantastic days sail but ended the day drinking wiskey perhaps judjing by the state of me the next day wasn’t! 🙂