Day 1 to 3 – Departure from Plymouth heading for Fastnet Rock.

After months of lockdown for Lifgun we departed at July 31’th 7.00 h UTC from Plymouth. Not even out of the bay, I recognized that something with the vang is not okay. That is really the fun part of sailing, you never done. With a non-working gas spring it becomes difficult, especially when you need to reef (reduce the size of the mainsail) then the vang is important. I decided to check out what the problem is and demounted the whole vang to figure out that in fact the gas spring was not working anymore. I was having that issue before, therefore I dived down into the spare lockers of Lifgun and grabbed a spare gas spring from there. These are the awesome cool moments…if you have the right spare around……After fixing that, we started sailing, nice light winds and a gentle upwind sailing. I went down to the navigation table and recognized that there was some water splashing around on the floor…hmmmm…..this is something I hate. After checking I figured at least out, that it was drinking water and not salt water. However, a bucket a sponge and the funny work started. After two hours and maybe 120 liters of water it looked quite okay…but then I started to disassemble the whole floor. There was water under the fridge, there was water under the seats and son on. Another two hours of work. During that work I was pondering from where this water is coming. A leak in a pipe ? No – the pressurizing pump is not working all the time, let’s check the water tank, a solid stainless cube – no leaks so far. The boat was dry when I arrived in Plymouth – so what I think is that we have a leak in the filling hose – because that was the only thing we did during the lockdown – we filled the tank from time to time to allow the watermaker to back flush. The problem is now under observation and I will check this when we are back in the harbor. For now Lifgun is totally dry. First night we went around the south tip of England and then started crossing the Celtic sea to Ireland. All upwind, all with 14 to 18 knots of wind. Sometimes with reef, sometimes without. That’s a heavy start. Everything is heeling, it’s banging, its loud and difficult to walk and cook. But we made progress and finally passed on Sunday August 2’nd around 19.00 UTC the iconic fastnet rock. Fastnet Rock is used as the midpoint of one of the world's classic offshore yachting races, the Fastnet Race, a 1,126 kilometres (700 mi) round trip from Cowes on the Isle of Wight, round the rock and back to Plymouth. It is also sometimes used as a mark for yacht races from local sailing centres such as Schull, Baltimore, and Crookhaven.
To pass once this rock was a bold point on my personal bucket list )))) Mission accomplished!

From 52.01.786 N / 10.45.990 W - August 3’th 2020