When Andrew came to stay.....

Our first activity after Anne's departure was to head for St Sampsons harbour and fill with diesel. When we arrived, Kevin the nice Rubis man was apologetic. Thanks to some silly games by the Boatworks people in St Peter Port, he had many more "health and safety issues" to worry about. Seems like the Boatworks folks don't like competition which undercuts their price by almost 40%! We hope they don't win the battle. We filled with 4,600 litres and if we had paid the ludicrous Boatworks prices it would have cost about £900 more!!!  

Kevin mentioned that the Boatworks folks had been taking pictures and looking for infringements to the "new operating procedures" and guess what, a strange looking character pitched up with a camera and started taking pictures of us fuelling up. Then Kevin's boss arrived and took pictures of the "character". All very silly.

Our advice - use Rubis as much as possible - if they are stopped from operating in St Sampsons, Boatworks will charge whatever they like. 

We had only just returned to St Peter Port and relaunched the dinghy when Andrew (the very Welsh one) arrived by Condor fast ferry:

Actually, it seems that it is a slow fast ferry as it keeps running well behind the timetable. When Andrew left us a few days later, the departure was 75 minutes late and the official message was "a minor technical issue with the port engine so unable to run at full speed". Hum - it had been running late for 5 days.

After Andrew settled into his second home, our forecabin, we planned to head ashore just as a new neighbour arrived on the pontoon. Against all numerical odds, it was another Nordhavn - a 57 named Goleen that we remembered had been part of the Transatlantic motorboat rally that Nordhavn organised in 2004. See Atlantic rally website for more information. Here is the new view from our aft cockpit:

Not bad really. The owner, Truls introduced himself - he was on passage from Norway to Las Palmas where he will base his boat. Somehow the weather in the Canaries is more tempting than Norway in winter for him. We now have an invitation to use their pontoon mooring and get some expert local advice when we head for the Baltic. Thanks Truls!

As it was a UK and French bank holiday weekend, the harbour got a bit busy. Here is the waiting pontoon for the Victoria marina - boats waiting for the tide to rise so they can pass over the cill:

If you have good vision, you can just spot the pontoon in amongst the piles of fibreglass. The yachts were rafted 12 deep - not a record though, the harbour patrol man said he had managed a 15 deep raft before. So glad we have to stay in the outer harbour area - that got busy too and Goleen had 3 yachts rafted to her. We were left alone as everyone rafted onto the yacht opposite. Being a tall, inhospitable motor boat has some advantages. We didn't even need to send Andrew out to scare people off.

On a lovely sunny Saturday, we walked to Fermain bay. As you can see, our cruise liner curse was in full swing. 3 were visiting with over 5,500 passengers in total:

Luckily, most cruise liner passengers do not walk far or are unable to do so. Fermain was unpolluted by liner types. And as beautiful as ever:

The beach cafe down in the bay serves mighty lunch portions. As you can see, the crew has developed a taste for the local Rocquette cider, the 6% stuff:

It somewhat spoils the view.

On bank holiday Monday, the St Peter Port hill climb event was on. We saw this on a previous visit and the drivers / riders are just as loony as before. Great fun though. Old mark II Ford Escorts clearly don't die:

They do hills very quickly too. The footpaths alongside the road were pressed into service as people wanted to maximise the amount of tarmac they had available:

Some did a little gardening too. Finally, the bikers really got cranked over on the first big bend:

Andrew and the captain agreed that they were not quite as brave on a motorcycle. Probably for very good reasons.


Numbers for the mathematicians:

We took on 5,600 litres of fuel at 46p / litre. That is under half the UK leisure fuel price. Of course, it was cheaper than last year too thanks to the global oil price drop. That covered the trip up to Inverness, back via Northern Ireland to Wales, then around Lands end to the Hamble and back to Guernsey (exactly one year's use to the day). It also ran the genset and copious amounts of heating in the winter months. Our estimated burn over the year is:

Main engine:  360 hours, 3240 litres

Genset:  285 hours. around 650 litres

Wing engine:  9 hours (to keep it working!) negligible fuel burn, say 45 litres

Heating: the rest, around 665 litres