Jim's blog

And L'affaire au Chocolat is teaming up with People's Coffee to run three sessions - The Dark Side of Coffee and Chocolate.

These will suit those people with a particularly keen interest in coffee and chocolate and their subtle flavours. Participants will enjoy a journey into the world of two delectable beans. People's Coffee and L'affaire au Chocolat team up to provide a journey into the world of two delectable beans. Find hidden treasures by cross-sampling coffee and chocolate produced from different regions. Taste the familiar and explore unique combinations. A goodie bag of paired samples will allow you to continue this journey at home.

Book now on the Wellington on a Plate web site starting here

I need a tender for Dovekie - and there isn't much room to carry one on deck.

An inflatable has some advantages from the ease to carry perspective but I am less happy with an inflatable's ability in windy conditions.

On the other hand a rigid tender is easier to row in the wind, can be towed easily but is less convenient if you want to carry it.

I have the free plans for the D4 Dink which is a 2meter stitch&glue pram dinghy. It seems well thought of from what I have found through web searches. I also like John Welsford's Tender Behind. It is similar to the D4 Dink but a bit more complicated to build I think as it has more panels and maybe stringers.

I have rowed a Tender Behind a short distance and while it wasn't going to set the world on fire it was good and stable to climb in/out of from a boat and easy to manage in and out of the water with wheels on the transom.

Not sure which way I'll go yet.

Time has been slipping by. I found I was unable to log on here and have just reinstalled Serendipity. Fortunately I didn't need my backup as it just used the existing database, except for replacing the admin user rows in the authors table. There is still some tidying up to do though - plugins to re-enable etc.

I haven't done as much sailing as I had hoped in Dovekie as I keep finding little areas of rot. 3 of the 4 corners of the cockpit were rotted from seat top to floor and I have cut out and repaired two of those. The other will keep until the soft area of paint covered wood annoys me too much. And there is an area of the coaming inside the port side spinnaker sheet winch that is rotten. When they fitted the roller furler they removed the spinnaker halliard block so I can't raise the spinnaker anyway - the sheet winches are not useful.

The is a little area of rot inside the stern locker in one corner of the cockpit. It is on the underside of a deck beam and the top of a post. I have cut out the worst of it and will paint on rot killer, saturate with Everdure and patch it up. I'll bolt in a couple of strong pieces of tanalised pine I think to brace up the beam. I have found a couple of small leaks around staunchion bolts so I'll need to pull those and reseat with new bedding compound.

On Sunday while contemplating how to rig reefing tackle at the mast I found that the bottom 200mm of sail track has pulled off. The screws/nail have just pulled out so I need to remove the mainsail and sort that before I head out again.

Once the immediate problems are solved to the point I feel happy taking her out into Cook Strait again I'll start stripping paint from the cabin top down the sides and across the decks to get that back in good shape.