Capella went in the water before some the things I wanted to do didn’t get done. It’s about 5 weeks later and finally we get the weather at the right time to tune the rig and put the sails up. The mast has been up for over a month, but I have still not managed to set up the rigging properly so that’s first job of the day. The mast needs to rake back slightly; it was leaning forward slightly so I need to loosen the forestay – but the bottle screw is between two large pieces of Maccano type plates that is part of the roller reefing gear (Plastimo 608S). So turning this is difficult – in the end worked out the best way was to use an Allen key , as the L shape could be manipulated to make it turn around a third of a turn at a time – ten turns later and it’s as loose as the tread allow, still not enough but it will have to do. After that making sure the mast is up right left to right and then putting in reasonable amount of pre-bend is relatively straight forward. After all we’re just ambling up and down the Orwell, not racing or crossing ocean.
Category: Capella
Next the sails
So back to the rig
Moving on Up
We’d been thinking about moving up from our previous Bradwell 18 – Cupido for a few years After a long search as considering about a dozen different types of yacht, a Jaguar 25 was top of our short list of boats we could actually afford. Finally last autumn the finances caught up with the ambition.
We found the boat fairs at Levington and Tollesbury very useful in helping us decide what we wanted, being able to sit in the cockpit with the tiller in your hand, is it comfortable, can I see over the coach roof. Going below and getting an idea how practical the living accommodation is, and the engine access.
We of course did a load of Internet searches for review and opinion, gathered data on theoretical sailing characteristics, and important things like headroom and position of the heads.
At the start of the search we stepped aboard a fin keel J25 at the boat fair at Levington and liked her instantly, and from then on subconsciously it had to be as good as that yacht. Capella was the 3rd of 4 Jaguars we looked at and obviously the best.
So it was in March 2013 we bought Capella, and after several trips down to Leigh Marina where she had spent the winter, we arranged for her to be brought back to Ipswich by road on the 29th April.