Yarmouth to Shamrock Quay (River Itchen)

Our lift was booked for Friday afternoon and as we had to collect a hire car that morning (need to transport a ladder, cleaning gear, get to and from the hotel we are using over the weekend etc) we opted to arrive the night before.

It was so strange heading back up the solent through waters we knew so well over the past years. It was also strange passing the entrance to the Hamble river, where we used to berth the Nordhavn. Instead we headed up to the Itchen River and Shamrock Quay.

For people who don't know the Solent area, here is Calshot Spit. The big building is a converted hangar where flying boats used to operate from many moons ago:

The tower houses the National Coastwatch Institution lookout - great views! Stephen (yes, the sailor, trolley shopper expert and clay pigeon murderer) used to be their training officer and occasionally we would get an SMS as we left the Hamble River saying we had been spotted. See, who needs AIS to be a stalker.

Here is how it used to look, when flying boats were still around:

To give us something to look at en route, the refinery had the usual selection of ugly tankers adorning the area and the military were out playing with a hovercraft (yes, they still build them around here!):


Berthed at Shamrock, this picture kind of summed up the "waiting for the lift out" as we looked over to the travelhoist:

It looks small in the picture but it can lift 75 Tons so our 40 or so will hardly stress it.


Maintenance news

Oh yes, we have some more for the strange folk who find this stuff interesting (or the people who revel in others' misfortune?)

En route to Yarmouth we had pumped out our black water holding tank. For the non boaters, this is the nasty one of the two - linked to the heads (OK, for non boaters, toilets). Kind of our mobile septic tank really. It has an electric pump for discharge which for some strange reason did not fully empty the tank. The indicator still flickered on "low" not empty. We did some investigation once at Shamrock Quay and found that the pump was broken. Exactly the same fault as we had a couple of years ago with the identical pump used for our grey water tank.

If you have a Sealand T series pump, then you will know how great it is. Never clogs, happy to run dry if you leave it on by mistake, very quiet etc:
Sadly, the motors have a feeble little worm drive arrangement. The end of the motor drive shaft, which is formed into the worm, simply shears off after x hours of use it seems. Of course, finding this out involves taking the pump apart and you can imagine how much fun that is now you know what it has been pumping through it. Such fun this boating life.

Seems like this will be a semi-regular feature for us. The grey water pump handles far greater volumes of liquid from the sinks, washing machine, dishwasher, tumble drier and showers. So, it gave up earlier on (after about 5 years). Now we live aboard, the equipment gets even more use so the next failure might be sooner. Hence we ordered a new pump for the black water tank and a spare motor assembly to repair the existing one. We will then have a functioning spare unit ready for another failure.

Why do they fit such a feeble drive mechanism in an otherwise very good bellows style pump which is advertised as being suitable for charter use / larger boats? The cost difference for a more robust mechanism would be a rounding error in the total pump cost as the motor itself is a standard 24v unit.