First Trials

After the excitment and stress of the launch, I spent Friday of last week with Vagabond getting bits of her to work and rigging the lines into the right places! I had remembered to fix the wind vane to the mast head before erecting the mast, so it was now time to see if it would "talk" to the wind display instrument.
The electricity master switch was turned on, and, with bated breath, I flicked the switch labelled "nav inst". Nothing happened, so I resorted to the Tackticks instruction book. The display needed to be turned on too.....The button was pressed and the apparent wind speed direction appeard. So too did the depth of water under neath us. Almost success - the true wind speed was not shown, despite the right connections being made to the GPS unit. Long periods on hold to the Raymarine help desk and a couple of emails to them have still not identifed the solution.
The radio was commissioned and appears to work, judging by the noises that it emits but it has yet to be used in transmission mode.
The gas was connected and checked for leaks (none). The gas rings work (or at least one of them does) so the kettle was boiled to make coffee.
The heater was tested......hmmm..... more work in progress - but who needs heating (me!!!)
The water tank was filled and didn't leak.
On Monday, the Dublin lass sent me her phone footage of the launch: Vagabond looks more under control than I thought at the time. And the comments from the cabin boy and cabin girl are delightful!

On Monday, the Scotsman and I took her for a sail. Well, more of a motor really. The wind was coming from due east dead straight down the reach of the river on which stands the marina. So we motored into it for a couple of hours, really to bed in the engine and get some idea of fuel consumption. We then turned about, unrolled the jib and drifted in the sun back up river to the marina, where I put her into the wrong berth! Never mind, it was good practice to move her!

Tomorrow, the wind is in the North. We'll take her down river, hoist the main and the jib to see what she can do.