The Great Adventure

Hello, I'm a 1991 Sadler 29 with bilge keels, my name�s Peregrine II but all my friends call me Perry. Things have been pretty boring for the past eighteen years I�ve been at Poole. My previous owner, Stan, was really nice but he never took me anywhere. He fitted a television in my cabin, super glued a shore power cable to my deck and stuck everything down with masking tape. He then sat and read his newspaper. The worse bit, six years ago he took my sails away and shackled me to the pontoon. Not much fun seeing all the other boats going places.

Mid July something was happening, Stan showed Heather and Paul around, he never lets people on board. They asked lots of questions like �where�s the table?� and �how many sails are there?� Couple of weeks later I�m hoisted out the water on a crane. A man, who I didn�t know, scraped my bottom and took moisture readings, very embarrassing. It took another week for me to realise Stan had sold me, I was very upset, what had I done wrong? Stan explained that it wasn�t anything I�d done he just couldn�t keep me any longer.

Then Heather and Paul started to visit, felt a bit odd at first. They rewired my shore power and put my sails back, this felt good. Just getting used to them when their friend Barry turned up. We went out into the harbour and even got a sail up, this is living, great! Barry showed Paul how to turn on the spot using the wash from my prop. They then brought me a new dinghy, fenders and mooring lines. Next thing I knew they were talking about a far off place called Medway. Will I make it OK? Will I let them down?

Heather and Perry at Poole

We all left Poole for Portsmouth on Saturday 5th September. It was sunny with a nice breeze, a perfect day. I changed my mind about Barry, he�s OK and knows how to treat a boat. He makes my sails tight, if you know what I mean. We were all happy and ahead of schedule so decided to take Sunday off with Sue who drove down to meet us. Barry went up my mast and fixed some stuff and then they all went out for the day.

Barry fixing things

Monday morning the 7th we left Portsmouth for Eastbourne, another nice day, what could possibly go wrong? Well, as we passed Brighton I had trouble with muck in my fuel. I tried to show them the problem by making the engine RPM fluctuate. They seemed to listen and went into Brighton to see an engineer. To cut a long story short, lots of things were changed on the engine but they still missed the real problem, THE FUEL. We tried to leave Brighton for Eastbourne but had to come back again.

It was Thursday 10th before we finally got to Eastbourne and then it nearly went wrong because the engine kept stopping. Paul called the engineer again who said my injectors needed reconditioning. THEY WERE STILL MISSING THE REAL PROBLEM, THE FUEL. Injectors back and ready to go Wednesday morning the 16th, by now I had given up trying to help. Then, to make matters worse, the weather changed and we had to wait a couple more days for an improvement.

Friday morning the 18th set off for Dover but tuned back again after an hour because of the dreaded FUEL PROBLEM. As soon as we were back in the marina they took out the fuel tank. They then realised what I was trying to tell them all along and rigged up a remote tank. This fixed the fault so no problems for the rest of the trip.

Perfect day on the way to Portsmouth

We were short of time now so set out for Ramsgate on Saturday 19th with Barry and Paul. Heather decided to drive the car as backup, just in case, but I knew things would be fine,. Great day, even arrived in Ramsgate early. Sue visited again for the evening and brought Heather down so she could be on the last leg of our journey. They all went out for fish and chips and a drink. I had a good feeling about Sunday.

Sunday morning 20th we set off for the Medway. Barry slept in my cabin for ages while Heather and Paul sat in the rain. Over a week late but happy, we arrived on my new mooring early afternoon. I really like my new home and it�s been great meeting new people. I wonder where I�ll go next?

Perry

Date Published 11th Oct 2009