About us and the boat

About us and the boat:

We were lucky enough to retire early at the start of 2013 so we could head off and "live the dream" on board our Nordhavn 47 Trawler Yacht. The idea is to see some of the planet, at a slow 6 - 7 knots pace. There are no fixed goals or timings, we just had a plan to visit Scotland and then probably the Baltic before heading south.

The idea is to visit the nicer areas in these latitudes before heading south for warmer weather. If we like somewhere, we will stay for a while. If not, we will just move on. So, for the people who love forward planning and targets, this might seem a little relaxed!

If anyone else is contemplating a trawler yacht life, maybe our experiences will be enough to make you think again, or maybe do it sooner then you intended!

The boat is called Rockland and she is built for long distance cruising and a comfortable life on board too. If you want to see more about trawler yachts and the Nordhavn 47 in particular, there is a link to the manufacturers website in our "useful stuff" section. For the technically minded, there is a little info and pictures of the boat and equipment in the same section

Regards

Richard and June

Tuesday 28 May 2013


A small technical hitch and more about the Fal

Last Saturday there was a 2 day weather window in amongst the various gales that was good for a run to South Wales. So, we planned a mid-day departure to get the tide timing around Lands End right (spring tides so a bit important). However, the gearbox oil cooler didn’t want to go with us for some reason. During a short run through the harbour on Friday, there was an oil leak from one of the fittings. Not serious but as leaks don’t tend to self-repair, better to sort it before heading off when we would be running the engine for about 30 hours non stop.

Friday also saw the start of the Fal River Festival. They deliver the beer from Skinners Brewery in Truro to Falmouth by ferry (the blue boat) which was escorted by the port tugs spraying water:





Then free music and general fun in the events square right nearby.

A couple of paragraphs for the technically minded folks out there:

The Captain removed, cleaned and refitted the flexi hose that fits onto an elbow in the cooler with some thread sealant. We also changed the gearbox oil and filter whilst doing this as some oil is lost anyway when taking the pipes off the cooler and it was coming up to time for the annual change with the world’s most expensive ZF filter. (They cost about £90 but are serious bits of kit as they have to handle the full oil pressure in the gearbox when running – about 300psi. some folks have fitted cheaper clone / pattern filters and found the casing blown apart and all the gearbox oil sprayed around the engine room. Not good…)

Of course the thread sealant has to cure a little so we didn’t run the engine again until late on Friday. The flexi hose fitting was fine but the large fitting installed directly into the cooler was also weeping. Grr. This needs one monster spanner. The Captain isn’t equipped with such a thing (no comment please ladies) and so we needed to find a nice marine engineer who was better tooled up (again, no comments please ladies or requests for pictures). Remind me sometime to have a rant about the parts people at Energy Solutions who seem to mess up every order. I thought I would get a gasket and O ring set in case the oil cooler had to be removed. I should have known better – they are as bad as the John Deere dealers are good in parts logistics.

Now for everyone:
Stuff like this always happens at the start of a bank holiday weekend, naturally. So, we just trundled up river again seeing this lovely old lady moored in the harbour entrance:




We then had an excellent time enjoying the sun, walking doing a little polishing and on Monday hunkering down as it poured for most of the day.

On the mid river pontoon at Ruan:



Monday was a good time to start the annual engine room clean up though and replace the water filter cartridge. The boat has a Seagull water purifier fitted and it is a great piece of kit. We use it for all the cooking and drinking water and you can tell the difference in taste if you are unlucky enough to pick up some “unpleasant” water from a marina. Of course, getting to the cartridge means emptying out the under sink cupboard. Imagine how hard that little task is in your house. Well, it is like that only worse on board. Still we found all sorts of interesting bottles of cleaning stuff for inside and outside use in there. Might even try them one day!

More walks around the Trelissick area and making friends with the natives. Ann the harbour patrol lady joined us aboard for tea and we learned about gig racing, Swiss square rigger sailing ships used as an alternative to jail for young lads and Nova Scotia duck tolling retriever dogs. You look them up, we had to. Cute so worth the effort (the dogs that is, not young Swiss tearaways).
We also learned about the guy who lives on an old wooden boat up here and decided that as he would never sail her again, he would cut down the 2 masts and burn them on his stove for warmth. I hope he doesn’t run out of fuel and start on the deck next time…..

Our neighbour on the pontoon over the holiday weekend:


Wouldn’t want his boat maintenance challenges.

Still no theory on the bad Cornish teeth though but if we have another cream tea in the National Trust tea room in Trelissick, we might look like a local.

The serious point is that we really didn’t mind about being delayed by the oil cooler. Whilst working it would have been a real pain, especially if we had wanted to get back over the weekend for work on Tuesday. Might have just gone and carefully monitored the cooler en route. Now it was an excuse to spend more time in the area and really get to enjoy it, exploring all the creeks and walks. We could still move the boat as the cooler wasn’t losing lots of oil and we didn’t feel trapped at all. Should get it sorted out on Thursday then let’s see what the weather wants to do.
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