The Centaur was often sold with mainsail roller reefing (see the claw post) so you needed to allow the sliders out of the mast track if you wanted to roll the boom. Unfortunately, over the years things have warn out a little and now the cover plate that used to get removed to allow the clips to come out constantly gets in the way, jamming the sliders as it goes past. This is mildly annoying if you are at the mast doing all the work, but if you’ve lead your halyards back to the cockpit, a jam renders that useless and a visit to the mast is required to unblock. I had to do this 4 or 5 times.
Jammed main sliders – fun with Inkscape!
The broads are forgiving, but not very big. Horsey mere, where we sail is one of the larger broads but it is still only about 1 km across at it’s widest part, the rivers and dykes are often barely more than a boat length wide. Suffice it to say, I don’t want to get in the way of every other boat by having to spend a long time raising our main.
My kids are still quite small, eldest Luke is not quite strong enough to raise the main alone at the mast, so they get the job of keeping our boat head to wind while I hoist the main. Our centaur has it’s original mast and boom, the main has sliders that run up the mast as you pull on the halyard as it common on many boats.
For the time being trusting my little crew to helm while I pull and un-stick the clips seems to work, but I will see what I can do to make the problem less frequent.
I woke up early from a dream about one of my most memorable sailing trips as a kid of about 14. Going from Burnham-on-Crouch to Shotley on the Westerly Longbow “Faraway II” with my parents and our friends.
Mouth of the River Crouch to the Swin Spitway – i-boating
My dream was of wind, spray and big swell, of feeling a little sea sick but of also having a great time. I can remember trying my best to steer a compass course to the Swin Spitway safe-water bouy while at the same time wrapped up in my orange waterproofs. Shaking the sea out of my eyes occasionally.
When not steering, I can remember trying my best with compass bearings on big marks (like the goalposts at foulness) and back bearings to work out our leeway.
When we got colder than we’d like in the cockpit one of us would swap over with chart work, plotting our position and updating the helm with a compass course to steer.
A Decca receiver similar to the one I remember
These were the days when our dead-reckoning and bearings from landmarks were MUCH more accurate than the DECCA navigator unit we had, it was a remarkable device but would give us a position as much as 1500m wrong.
UPDATE: The Foxwell Family had a trip to this very area recently! Check out their video:
We set off early but got caught in the Good Friday traffic, our usual 85 minute trip turned into nearly 3 hours! Must leave before dawn next time!
This thing is magical!
We finally arrived, armed with sandwiches, fruit scones, sun and a strap wrench we tackled our first job of the day. The stuck fuel cap.
And brilliant! In seconds we were ready to fill up, slip the mooring and go sailing! We now have 20L of diesel in the tank, will add more on the next trip.
Horsey is one of the most popular spots in Norfolk for sailing, it is especially popular with traditional broads yachts from Hunters Yard and Martham Boats who were out in force in an impressive race.
Everything went well, all the bits and bobs worked, the engine started easily and the lazy jacks actually were useful. It was a great first trip out. Roll on the next one!
I’ve been reading through some of the old paperwork that came with Rosie Free. Numerous surveys, receipts, licenses and a few letters.
We seem to have the full history of Rosie Free right from the time her hull was certified by Lloyd’s.
Originally named “Katrina” in 1979 I believe she was renamed “Rosie Free” in 2007
Also, one thing I brought back is a 2001 copy of “East Coast Rivers” by Janet Harber, lots of potential future destinations. I might by a more recent version.
Not much else to report, ordered a replacement fuel filler which I will fit soon.
Today was supposed to be a simple day out, a first quick sail around. I had a couple of essential jobs from the TODO list, checking and topping up the engine oil and filling the diesel tank. But after we were going to go sailing!
I read on the WOA forums that I’d been checking the level with the dip stick slightly wrong (I’d been screwing the stick back in before pulling out to see the level) and now doing it the right way (not screwing the stick in) shows we’re on the low side so I need a top up.
On our shakedown trip I took it for granted that we had enough fuel to reach the new mooring because the previous owner had offered to take us on a trip there and back, I went with that and didn’t actually check until today (our intended second trip). The tank is stainless steel and appears in good condition. The capacity is 40 litres. My plan today was to add 5L of garage forecourt unmarked diesel and repeat the next few visits.
But nope. The cap is jammed. No tool I had to hand helped. Could I still keep the crew happy with a short jaunt out without topping up? Some tapping and careful listening (the tank has no visual gauge) told me … “meh.. maybe..” but not enough to be confident. We have less than 1/4 of a tank, probably less than 1/6. So.. nope, not enough to be 100% sure for a trip.
So today became a day for Vicki, Luke and Coco to explore the walk to the beach and the wildlife around our moorings while Evie and I got on with a few other jobs.
Lazy Jacks
I admit, I’ve never used them before, and on our pre-purchase sailing trip I was baffled by the funny zippy sailbag thing that I could not remove from the boom despite trying. After watching Ian and Hannah Foxwell’svideo about Lazy Jacks I now realise what we have is a “Stack Pack”.
One of the lazy jack lines was threaded behind the starboard cross tree, which probably explains why they were not attached to the boom but instead tied off at the mast. With a twist of ingenuity and comedy involving using our kettle as a weight, Evie and I managed to get the lines the right side of the trees and have rigged our stack pack!
Things definitely look a lot tidier now! The wind was blowing from ahead so I decided to see what all this lazy jack fuss was about and haul the main up on the mooring.
Now, our Centaur has blocks, clutches and coach roof winches. The halyards and topping lift are lead back to the cockpit. Great I hear you say! Well, turns out not that helpful for two reasons:
Friction from all the blocks and clutch makes the job LOTS harder
The luff clips keep getting stuck so you have to go on deck anyway to free them 4-5 times.
Only going to use these beefy winches for the topping lift now
Without #2 I would probably endure having to do a little more pulling to be able to steer and manage the main. But our Centaur has the original mast with the removable rail that would let you use the boom roller reefing by letting the clips out so you can roll the boom.
Faraway II had the same boom and mast system and I can only remember ever using it once, the rest of the time we used slab reefing because it was a pain. So because of #2 I’ve decided to leave the main halyard up at the mast. I can raise the sail in a few seconds this way and un-jam clips if needed easily one-handed.
Stack Pack Verdict?
My instinct is that lazy jacks can get in the way when raising the sail (it did on the mooring until I adjusted the jacks) and that they are only useful when dropping your main. But, I don’t actually have a choice at the moment, we have no traditional mainsail cover and the zip bag thing looks horrible flopped over to one side if the lazy jack lines aren’t attached. So we will see how it goes and probably learn to live with it.
The Claw!
I mentioned above that the Centaur has a rolling boom reefing system. You might have been wondering how on earth you can put up with disconnecting and reconnecting the vang/kicker using this. Or even if you can have them at all. Well, the cunning folks at Proctor who invented it came up with “the claw”. For some reason our claw was not fitted, so finding it and fitting was the next job of the day.
Claw on the left
The “claw” is a “C” shaped aluminium block with four small wheels on the open end of the C. The gap at the open end is only about 8-10 cm, enough for the sail to easily pass through. The idea is that the boom can still roll and you can still haul down on the kicker.
You can see the wheels more clearly than from my vector drawing here. With the stack pack attached the roller boom system is pretty much impossible to use so I could attach the kicker to the boom directly. But, this works and I don’t want to drill holes in the boom.
So, next visit is going to involve some brute force to get the diesel cap off and finding an easier way of filling the main engine oil. If the weather is not very nice maybe I’ll get around to part 2 of the pulpit.
Set off early this morning to attempt to fix our dislodged pulpit.
My plan was to loosen the screw on the other foot so as to get more access to the one I need to fix. That worked but I fumbled one of my spanner sockets while in the chain locker and now there is a piece of my tool set that fell out of sight and will remain that way forever!
My spanner decided to find out what it is like down the small gap in the bottom left of the locker…
I managed to get the foot raised enough to try screwing it back in but with no luck. With the help of my phone camera I could see the fitting a bit more and decided to remove the tube and clean it up. I took the chance to test the navigation light with a multi-meter and some good news is that the cable running through the pulpit frame is sound and the bulb is good. The bad news is that there is no power coming in from the cabin. The wires from the battery end of things were dead. So that’s another one for the TODO list.
The tube’s thread was a little mangled at one end, but with some gentle persuasion involving some mole-grips, nut and spanner it looks in better shape now. But try as I did, I could not get the thing to even slightly go back into it’s hole. I really do wonder if it has never been in there properly.
So the only thing left to try, is on my next trip up to cut a flap in the other side of the headlining, undo the other feet and remove the whole pulpit and try to get the thread in there from a more human angle.
One fairly urgent job on my TODO list is to re-attach one of the pulpit feet to the deck. Our surveyor mentioned this as one of the recommended items for attention on the phone to me so I decided to pay visit to check before committing fully as I’d not noticed any damage before.
Some time between my earlier visit to the boat and the marine surveyor turning up she’d been moored up wrong and pressure on the bow rope had, over the period of about a week pulled out one of the pulpit feet from the deck!
With the wind a few days earlier, without any springs attached she rode forward about 5 meters and put pressure on the pulpit leg
The pulpit on a centaur has four feet, each attached to the deck like so:
After gently cutting away some of the pristine headlining inside, a closer inspection of the damage (and mopping up the rain water) revealed no sign of any damage to the metal fittings, deck, or threaded tube that the navigation light cable runs through. It simply was no longer screwed into the pulpit foot. I suspect it had been like this since an earlier refit and had only been attached by the sealant around the metal foot!
Being short of time on our maiden trip to our new mooring at Horsey I was only able to apply duct tape to stop rain getting in. So this weekend I hope things remain dry and I can finish the job properly. I will include photos if I remember!
On the broads it’s easy to totally forget about the rise and fall of tide, and the currents in many places are not strong at all. But there is no harm in roping up properly just as you would at a coastal marina.
Springs and Warps!
If you only have two lines and one comes undone then your pride and joy is going to cause havoc or be damaged. In our case damage was only done to the boat we are about to buy, but it could easily have caused damage to someone else’s boat.
Rosie is 40 years old! That’s 1 year old than me, 2 older than Vicki and 1 year older than our house. She’s solid, but like any boat needs some regular TLC.
Something missing here!
Lucky for us she’s had lots of work done already, keel bolts re-bedded, hull epoxied etc and everything on board seems to work so far. But there definitely is a TODO list of things that I need to get done before they become problems later such as: (not in any particular order)
Fit split pins in forestay bottle screw – DONE!
Fix rainwater ingress around engine fuel cut off – DONE!
Years and years ago, I was 12, I was deeply hooked on sailing; my favourite place in the whole world was crashing through the waves of the Crouch estuary. Some of my best childhood memories are of steering a Westerly Longbow “Faraway II” trying to see how quickly we could get to Whitaker 6 from Burnham-on-Crouch.
Faraway II on her 2018 mooring in Spain (photo from google images)
My parents wanted us to try a family activity, we didn’t have our own boat yet so we looked at chartering as an option and quickly found Bill, Cora and Faraway II. They taught me how to sail and navigate, tie knots, about tides, how to use Captain Fields rules, how to use the VHF, Radio direction finder, take back bearings, read the wind and so many other things.
Then, Bill and Cora embarked on a journey around the canals of Europe in a new boat, a fantastic new Beneteau First 351, bought after selling their beloved Westerly.
Fast forward to 2018, I have this idea of a sailing holiday on the Norfolk Broads. We hire out Dawn Wind from Eastwood Whelpton and have a great time.
Shortly after I go slightly mad and starting looking at yacht broker sites!
A few months later, and we now find ourselves the proud owners of a solid Westerly yacht.
A Centaur named “Rosie Free”.
So, this little blog will be a little bit about our adventures in and looking after this classic sailing boat. Maybe someone will find things I post useful.
Centaur Free 