Lymington, jumble sales and an elevated time at Shamrock Quay

Lymington was, as always, lovely. Especially as the sun was busy too, so rare this year. However, we kicked things off with a big wash and scrub for the boat. From something in Dartmouth we had inherited lots of sooty black flakes that were a real pig to wash off.  The steam train was well away across the river so we can only assume it was the Higher Ferry or a particularly ill and enormous coal eating bird with his equally ill family flying in close formation.

To improve things, we had a lunch invite from Andrew and Linda on Zephyros. Their boat is really pristine and to keep it that way Dylan the dog gets special footwear:

His slightly sad look might be related to the bootees or to the fact that we were not feeding him our lunch. We must take the Cares to task though, - they bring Dyl to us unshod..... Perhaps they are insinuating that our 47 is a bit of a shed.

Our regular stowaway Anne arrived with Izzy our goddog. No footwear for her, she kind of views the entire boat as hers now and sees off anyone who looks like boarding us with great glee. When Anne took up her usual pose (recliner chair, alcohol, dazed look) Dylan decided that he could claim her:

Izzy looked on, unimpressed that her owner had been adopted:

Saturday was a quick walk, an all too brief catch up with the Broom 39 owners John and Kath, then a short run to Shamrock Quay ready for our lift out. It was grey and gloomy again - the UK spring sunshine was clearly spent. Thanks to a big following tide and our poor memory of how long such a trip would take, we arrived at Shamrock well before slack water. The work berth that we have to use ready for a lift out is a long pontoon that is at right angles to the river and hence the stream. When it runs, it really runs. More sprinter than marathon runner speed too. We had a very interesting time getting between these two cruisers and avoiding being swept onto the downstream one:

It reminded the captain of a job when he was way way younger (but no better looking) acting as  Potter Heigham bridge pilot on the Norfolk Broads, squeezing hire fleet boats into silly spaces.

Then the annual excitement / stress of seeing your home being hoisted into the air. Only this time it was very low stress as the lift guys in Shamrock Quay are excellent. Last year was very different - high stress and frustration levels thanks to the mob in Hamble Point who are total cowboys when it comes to lifting and moving boats. Duly moved into the lift bay:

and then carefully hoisted aloft:

The bottom was not too grubby but we did discover an  unexpected hanger on:

There was a piece of thin rope wound between the prop and the rope cutter which we reckon we picked up in the approach to Shamrock. It was twisted around and the end was nicely frayed, probably due to our rope cutter giving it some attention when we went astern berthing.

The Shamrock Quay hoist team did a good job pressure washing her off and chocking her ready for us to start work. We just love this bit.

Dartmouth to Lymington

After some pretty windy days, a 4/5 looked like a nice forecast. Naturally the prevailing South Westerly wind wasn't happening as that would mean waves from our stern and a nice ride across to the Isle of Wight. Also naturally, the tides were about the worst possible times for this trip so we just had to get going as early as possible. That meant as soon as it was light so we could avoid the pot markers in the entrance to Dartmouth.

A 4:15 alarm was a nasty shock. Heading downriver in the dark was OK but the timing worked really well as twilight happened just as we got to the harbour entrance where we needed it to spot the pot markers.

The weather forecast was perfect. A lovely sunrise:

a following sea with a swell of around 2 metres and a lovely sunny day. Our route was pretty simple:

staying well south of Portland Bill to avoid  the overfalls and then south of the firing range a little further to the east before heading "up" towards the Solent.

The weather men and women were spot on with their forecast too - as we headed east so the wind which was on the nose (yet again) calmed down and the swell height dropped too. All in all very good for motorboating.

We ran at an abnormal for us 1800 rpm as we wanted to get past Portland Bill before the tide turned against us. Ideally we would have left earlier than 5am but as previously mentioned there are often poorly marked fishing pots off Dartmouth so we wanted some light as we headed out to sea. The timing worked OK and we only had to push any significant tide as we approached North Head and the entrance to the Solent between the two forts. As an example, here is the plotter image as we were off Portland Bill:

Plenty of tidal help there (speed through the water was about 7.4 knots). We had the normal dance off Anvil Point avoiding a raft of pot markers. We are not sure what the collective noun for pot markers is but perhaps it should be "a buggeration" as at least half of them were very badly marked. Our lookouts, Kylie the cockatoo and Patrick the penguin, were utterly useless again. No warnings or advice, they just sat and cuddled all the way from Dartmouth until we arrived in Lymington:

We still wonder what a Pengatoo baby would look like. Any good photoshop users out there?

Arriving in the Solent you are greeted by the forts - this low laying one on the spit at Keyhaven:

which herald the busy madness of the Solent area. Far too many boats around for our liking. We were down to 2.5 knots as we pushed through the tides that swirl through the narrows here. Some wing engine exercise, some wide open throttle running and then into Lymington and onto the Dan Bran pontoon. Andrew and Linda on Zephyros were already installed there:

rafted out on another boat. We were given a spot alongside the pontoon despite only wanting to stay for 2 nights compared to Andrew's 10 or so. Sometimes, life is kind to you.

The trip took us about 12 hours and there are no maintenance or other issues to report we are pleased to say. Upon arrival, Dylan the Welsh Terrier who you met a little while ago when we had our canal trip gave us a lovely greeting and then collapsed on the saloon floor:

It is so tiring being that cute all day.

Darting about whilst it was windy

After our little calm run from Plymouth, the forecast decided to become a little less appealing:

So, we happily hung around Dartmouth instead. Hanging around involved getting invited to a truly excellent Sunday roast at Bernie and Jenni's house. It also involved taking the gorgeous Beau the dog to Slapton sands for a run around and then up to Dartmouth castle too:

Although the sun was out you can guess about the wind from Beau's ears! Torcross, the little village next to the sands is a good spot off season:

We also witnessed some folks doing very strange things to the tank memorial there:

Yes, if you look closely, you will see that the guy was using a "Henry" vacuum cleaner to tidy up the tank. I bet that isn't part of the standard army operating procedure from the 1940s. If you haven't heard about it before, the tank was recovered from the sea and placed as a memorial to one of those second world war nightmare moments, when a US Army practice landing for D Day turned into a shooting fish in a barrel opportunity for German E boats. Have a look at Exercise Tiger.

We managed to tire out little Beau by then walking him up to Dartmouth Castle and back so our job was done:

What else did we get up to? Well, a trip to Totnes, more Beau walking and an excellent evening meeting Martin and Inge, the owners of another Nordhavn 47 called Malaspina. We were moored on the west side of the Dart river. They were on the East. We chatted until we realised that they had missed the last ferry back so a quick RIB launch and delivery service was needed. Great people. In fact we have liked nearly all the Nordhavn owners that we have met. Now, you have to guess which ones fit in the other category. Andrew and Linda - it is OK, they were not Welsh.... Michael, they did not have their own train set. Colin, they were not pilots.

Martin and Inge kindly helped to drink some of our gin stock. Poor (cross dressing) BA Captain Colin might find the cupboard bare if he doesn't hurry up and join us soon.

Dartmouth is a place you can easily get stuck in. When Bernie and Jenni invite you for dinner, loan you a car and generally make life so pleasant it is hard to move on. However a lift out next week beckons so we have to get going again.

Bernie, Jenni and Beau to Dartmouth

No, Bernie, Jenni and Beau is not a place. Or a new name for Plymouth (no one could possibly call Plymouth "Beau" after all).

You've met Bernie and Jenni in here before. Bernie is the man with a huge collection of interesting, sometimes elderly, cars and boats including Mimosa, a Dunkirk little ship that was in the film "Dunkirk" last year. Jenni is his way better looking partner. Beau is new to you but here is your introduction:

He is a Coton de Tulear and dead cute with a lovely temperament. Actually, Jenni tells us that he is 1/8th Bichon but we didn't hold that against him or call him a mongrel.

The three of them joined us the evening beforehand at Mayflower marina - it was kind of a quick B and B turnaround after Tim and Sheila who left that afternoon. The trip to Dartmouth was in grey slightly foggy conditions but very calm indeed. Bernie took a relaxed approach to helming:

Jenni had a more elegant approach despite wearing Bernie's pyjama trousers to keep warm:

although she did get rather unsubtle when her glass was empty:

Around Start Point the gloom cleared a bit and we were able to use the flybridge properly. Jenni and Beau had their own private space:

In keeping with the lighthouse and headland tradition, here is Start Point with that misty grey atmospheric look about it:

Notice how we avoid words like "dull" and "gloomy". We had arranged a berth in Dart marina, much easier for Beau to handle than the mid-river pontoon and dinghy trip that we normally have. The run was about 6 hours long in lovely motorboating sea conditions, just a shame about needing the radar from time to time. The boat behaved herself too.

After an excellent quality and value fish and chip supper in the Floating Bridge pub (as always) we all retired to catch up on sleep. Great trip, great crew. We like this boating business (luckily).

Falmouth to Plymouth

After an excellent and much needed night's sleep, we decided that we needed exercise. So, the RIB was launched and it took us down to the Trelissick pontoon. We walked around the house, stopped for coffee and cake there (you just have to) and then walked around the woodland path with a detour to the quay and Iron Age fort ruins. Gorgeous spot, very west country:

We felt suitably healthy after two days of inactivity at sea (OK, there was an hour or so bracing ourselves in the bumpy bit!)

As Tuesday had a rainy forecast we took the boat down to Falmouth Haven and spent a night alongside their pontoon so we could walk ashore and avoid a soaking in the dinghy. It was nice to be reunited with Falmouth and to wander along the main street again. We did manage to walk past Dolly's Gin Palace on the theory that we had plenty on board and that was cheaper.

Wednesday looked way calmer out to sea but yet again we headed off in the gloom and a little rain. This was becoming a habit and not a nice one. Still things soon brightened up and we enjoyed a pretty calm trundle to Plymouth. HMS Montrose kept calling folks on the radio to announce a live gunnery firing exercise and it was exactly in the area that we wanted to transit - near Gribbin head. Luckily they stopped before we had to make a big diversion though. Must be government cutbacks reducing the number of shells they can expend every day. Thank you austerity.

Later we heard that they were to the south of the Eddystone lighthouse and about to do the same live firing. Perhaps it wasn't austerity - maybe they sunk something by mistake and beat a hasty retreat to a new area.

Coming into Plymouth, HMS Dragon entered with us:

Not sure about the dragon logo on her bows to be honest.... Maybe defence cutbacks will mean sponsored ships in future. This could be from Brains brewery?

We had arranged a berth in our favourite Plymouth spot - Mayflower marina. The only problem was that it wasn't a nice hammerhead this time but a cruddy little pontoon finger opposite the hoist dock that needed a slalom approach thanks to the wind which wanted to pin us onto a line of boats moored fore and aft alongside it. We wriggled in, trussed the boat up to the short finger and celebrated the end of Tim and Sheila's cruising in proper style. Proper style? A Baker Tom's cheese straw of course. They are suitably enormous as Sheila found out:

Penarth to Falmouth

After several days of waiting for a better forecast, it looked like it was finally coming. The weekend had way smaller waves and wind promised, so our yachting friends from Portishead, Tim and Sheila, drove round to join us. After a day of settling in on board and a last walk around Cardiff Bay, we prepared to head off.

Wales gave us a last present; it was tipping down as we left the berth and headed out to wait for the barrage lock and the sea proper. Hiding under the bimini cover allowed the captain and Tim some respite from it all:

Luckily it stopped as we were in the lock so we were only soggy not drowned....

Taking the 10am lock out, we pottered down the Bristol Channel in grey and gloomy weather. Calm enough to start with but the wind was, of course, on the nose. We were overtaken at close quarters by a quite ugly ship that was doing buoy maintenance work in the area:

Our route looks strange as it starts from somewhere in the middle of the water on this shot from Marinetraffic.com. Simple enough reason, meanness! We don't pay for the upmarket access to their data and so only get track details for the previous 24 hours. Still, you can see where Cardiff is clearly enough:

The swell built up to the expected 2 to 2.5m (on the nose again) as we got further west. The sun came out, stuff looked nicer until we appraoched the headland off Woolacombe. There the tide was whipping around the headland in our direction of travel. The wind, which was on the nose, was whipping around it too. The combination of wind over tide superimposed on the swell from the Atlantic was "interesting".  Some nice big high sided waves of up to 4m appeared (on the nose of course) with lovely "holes" on the other side for the boat to fall into. We washed the anchor regularly, had to listen to a couple of cupboards making noises as things moved around and managed to make our passengers feel a bit secondhand.

Once clear of the headland and heading for Hartland Point the swell settled back to the forecast couple of metres (still on the nose of course) and all was well. OK, all was well except our passengers had to recover a bit.

We were treated to another of those glorious sunsets and Sheila took these:

Having double glazing means you get some interesting reflections of the sunset across the saloon too:

You can even see the  outline of Pooh Bear who seems to be staring intently out to sea.

The overnight run down the north coast of Cornwall was pretty quiet. A lovely moon and plenty of stars made looking outside more interesting:

No other traffic around to cause us to divert our course or give the helmsperson any cause for concern. We reached Cape Cornwall just as the sky started to brighten. Well, that is change from black to dark grey.  Passing Land's End and Longships lighthouse, it was "grey and atmospheric" as the poetic types say.  Misty and overcast to the rest of us but quite dramatic really. As we turned east to head up the English Channel, the fog descended so the radar was put back into service for a while. Luckily it cleared and passing the Lizard was done in sun - but with the wind on the nose again as now it had become easterly. How does that work?

The general consensus was that the Lizard should be called the Crocodile when viewed from the south west. Perhaps ancient Cornwall man hadn't seen Crocodile Dundee at the cinema before he named it.

Great excitement as we then turned more northerly and  headed up towards the Manacles. We were joined by some Risso's dolphins including a mum and baby who spent ages bow riding with us. Much squealing and excitement from the crew who firmly believes that if you show appreciation for the dolphins' efforts they repay you by putting on a good show. It seemed to work. Photographing them is always tricky. Here is Tim's handiwork:

And a little video:

A little wide open throttle burn before we happily entered Falmouth and headed up river to our favourite spot on Tolverne mid river pontoon. It was pretty empty bar one little dayboat with a couple on board who were sunbathing. As we moored they noticed our port of registry on the stern and asked if we had just come around the corner from Fowey. Tim proudly announced that no, we had come from Cardiff. They seemed sceptical and double checked with the Captain when he appeared a little later after pinning the stabilisers, killing the engine and navigation gear etc etc.

The trip took us 28.5 hours, a quick one. Neap tides helped, as did running a little harder than we normally would at around 1630rpm. Nothing else dramatic to report, the boat and machinery behaved after her winter layup. Well, we could report a small glass of wine to celebrate our arrival as Tim and Sheila were fully recovered well before then.

More tinkering thanks to the forecasts

Another update for the technically minded or very bored:

One last little pre-departure thing was to check out our fire control stuff. The boat is fitted with a Seafire system which automatically shuts down the engine room fans and the main engine and genset if the fire extinguisher bottles are triggered by a rise in temperature. Has to be done or the fire suppressant that the extinguishers put out would get dragged out of the engine room by the fans / eaten by the main engine rather than sit there to put the fire itself out. Not too good for the engine either, breathing all that stuff in and trying to burn it.

Some Nordhavn owners have reported that the unit has failed and will not reset thanks to component failures in the Seafire control box meaning no main engine..... Not nice if underway. We had considered this ages ago and got a few diagrams showing what to do if it failed but we probably hadn't taken it seriously enough. So, we did some checking of our control box. Luckily it is of the older type which doesn't have the same "prone to failure" problem as the later boxes.  All the same we looked at the wiring to ours:

which of course did not tie in exactly to the wiring diagram provided with the boat. Luckily the "normally open / normally closed" logic for the relays was the same and to get the main engine going again if the box failed is simple enough - one wire to remove and isolate. Getting the engine room fans going needs some wires to be bridged. Our wing engine is not part of the system and so could be used whilst the main is being restarted.

The nice Nordhavn technical folks in the USA are looking at the problems reported and said they will come back with a suggestion after escalating the failures with Seafire. We think that will mean simply wiring a couple of bypass switches around some of the relays in the unit.  In the meanwhile and until a definitive suggestion has come from them we've just made up a simple kit of parts that is taped next to the unit with instructions on which wires to isolate and which to bridge:

We sincerely hope not to need to use it of course.

Finally the weather suggests that there will be a window with waves around Land's End lower than the recent 6 metres. We plan to take advantage of it to move to the south coast somewhere.

To magnetron or not to magnetron, that is the question

Sometimes things like to bite you. Well, the rather nice Miele microwave / grill thingy decided to do that at the worst possible time. We were just back on board after dropping off the Defender in the Solent area, ready to use during our coming lift out. Firing up the microwave to cook dinner, it made the "dead magnetron" noise and gently expired. Is it worth trying to repair it? 10 years old? Nope, we decided to get a new one and duly removed the deceased device:

Of course, going wrong when we cannot easily collect a new one and just as Easter is approaching when delivery of a new one gets difficult, is perfect timing. Thanks. Finding one of the same dimensions was not too hard as Miele do a more modern offering. One was duly ordered and cooking was restricted to the oven, cookpot and hob for a couple of days. Hardly a problem. We just like having a microwave to easily heat up pre-prepared freezer food whilst on passage. Fortunately the weather was bad enough to delay our departure to later than the microwave delivery.

Stuff is never simple, although the new one slotted nicely into the cabinet, the fixing method has changed and so we need more height to put the fastening clips in place. Grr.... Of course, the jigsaw is in store.

Luckily the forecasts meant there was no rush at all:

No desire to be off Land's End with 6m wave heights and the normal confused wave pattern there.

The very good news was that we got the hull scratches, inflicted by the old lifeboat (see last post), sanded and polished out. "John the Gelcoat" (Apex boat repairs) has a great reputation locally and did a careful and excellent job.  He didn't want to fill the marks unless he was forced to as any new gel matched to the hull colour would, of course, fade differently to the original over time. John is also a very nice guy!! Strongly recommend him if you need any GRP work in South Wales.

Back to the microwave / grill thing. Having borrowed a jigsaw from Simon, a local yacht surveyor, we were armed to do battle. For those interested, Simon's survey business is YSC Surveys and he knows his stuff! We also believe that he doesn't use his jigsaw during boat tests. If you need a survey in Wales or the Somerset / Devon / Cornwall areas he is well worth a call. This post sounds more and more like an advert - not meant that way, just worth commenting on good folks when you find them, as in the marine world they are sadly few and far between......

The hook things that are designed for use in standard size kitchen cabinets are totally useless and a complete nightmare in non standard boat apertures. After cutting out more access space, fitting wooden packing blocks to the locker to allow the hooks to sit at the right separation and lots of trial and error and even more bad words, the new unit finally latched in place. Maybe a new magnetron would have been better after all!

Of course, the surround is slightly different so the wooden trim pieces that fitted around the old one beautifully have some gaps with the new. So be it! Replacement can wait until we have more tools to hand. At least we have a microwave / grill again that should not come out to join us when the going gets bumpy:

One positive bit of news, think we have tracked down a little fluid leak from the heating / air conditioning system that has been bugging us for a while. Loose hose clip(s) in the main cabin air handler had let some coolant leak out which was tracking between the pipe and insulation wrap, then ending up in the bilge. Couldn't see it as it was hidden under the insulation of course. Perhaps we missed our vocation and should have been detectives.

Just got to replace the insulation now.