Harsh, unrelenting winter weather has continued bar an interlude last weekend when we had a few days of relatively fine, but still chilly weather. At least this gave all the keen fishos a chance t get out on the water.
Rapport has lain forlornly in her marina berth until we pulled her onto the hard stand early last week for her annual out of water check. We had noticed Rapport wasn’t pulling her full rpm – only reaching about 2,550 when she usually reaches about 2,800. In one sense this doesn’t matter as we normally only cruise at around 1,600-1,800 rpm. However if a diesel engine doesn’t reach her designated WOT rpm it’s a sign of problems such as dirty hull and/or running gear, turbo issues or cooling issues in the case of an overheating engine. We weren’t running hot indicating that a fouled hull was the problem. Sure enough when we pulled Rapport out the hull was quite fouled, the props had a bit of growth and the shafts also had some growth and small mussels growing. Anti foul was last applied Feb ‘21 so we guess this is not surprising. New anti foul was applied plus Propspeed on the props and shafts. Also removed some fishing line tightly wrapped around both shafts near the props. This had to be burned off. Some paint imperfections in the cockpit also rectified.
Rapport was booked to be re-launched Thursday morning 18/8, however on the preceding Tuesday it was apparent we were in for a real blow so we delayed this a few days. Sure enough on Thursday there was a NE wind in the high 20 knots, gusting 40 with heavy rain. I’m glad we postponed.
Now all we need is some good boating weather or even half reasonable would be OK.
