And then it snowed and got chilly and windy

Any thoughts of taking the boat for a brief spin around the bay were halted by the weather forecast:

We cannot recall seeing the "risk of light icing" comment on an inshore waters forecast in years. It was going to be cold.  The land based forecast was no more encouraging:

Wind chill of -12C  persuaded us not to go for a walk either so the crew's Fitbit figures might look bad this week.

A few inside jobs got completed. Locker tidying and cleaning, fitting a new 32A plug to the shore end of our power lead etc. The old plug had screws that held the two parts together which were fitted from the outside. Hence they were corroding and one didn't want to undo when we went to do a regular check on the tightness of the cable clamps. The new one is better - the screws are inside, protected when the plug is in use and attached to a shore outlet. Must remember to take it apart in a few days and recheck the tightness of the newly made connections.

Then a couple of days spent totally on the boat followed. Why? Well, there were the force 10 gusts and snow and wind chill and blocked roads and lethal icy pontoons to consider. We even got a red Met office warning for the area:

Creaking ropes, a very busy heating system and lots of tea followed. We were so glad that our boat was originally built for a Danish guy and was specified with a huge Webasto boiler to make copious amounts of hot water for the heating system. She also has double glazed windows (very rare on Nordhavn 47s) and some Thinsulate insulation in the roof lining. All that means we stay nice and warm inside despite the -13 C wind chill they expected (and we got!). Of course, it did involve burning a little diesel but we didn't have to worry about the reports of UK gas shortages. In fact we still have around 3,000 litres of diesel on board from our spring fill up and that would keep the heating going for a few days. We hope that it will not all be needed though.

After a night of snow, the captain bravely shovelled the drifted stuff out of the walkways and aft cockpit despite the -12 windchill outside. This once was a walkway with steps up to the pilothouse but ended up as a 3 foot little drift:

The foredeck could not be cleared as the snow that laid there had turned to ice. The stainless steel handrails were coated with ice, it was hanging from the rub rail and even a poor screen wiper:

Oh, the boat had no name either - snow seemed to have attached itself to the transom (which was downwind):

The road through the marina was closed too. OK, with the Defender we could probably have escaped where normal cars would fail but it was not tempting outside. We will save the "snow fun in a Defender" thing for emergencies. BTW, an emergency does not include people who ask us "can you run me to Tesco because I have run out of milk".  Newsflash - so have they and you can survive without the stuff.

Of course, after clearing up the snow, it started to fall heavily again. A day later and with the fun of clearing the next batch of snow off the boat, we realised that things were not that bad really. Steve the waterbus man lives a few miles away in Sully and took a few pictures when he ventured outside. This was stuck in the lane to his house:

They say that another snow plough was also stuck further up the lane trying to get to rescue this one. The Cardiff area got hit with a lot of snow drifts, thanks to the gales. We offer our thanks to Lord Bute and his old docks as we were pretty well protected and today the big thaw is well and truly underway. All those flood warnings don't really worry us much. The snow tends to melt into the marina and an extra inch or so of water underneath us is no bad thing.