In and around Brighton

After wandering the city, we explored further afield. Luckily there is a good bus service at sensible prices too. Amazing that it has survived. We toodled out to Lewes and wandered around the river and town in gorgeous sun and a lovely temperature. Is this really the UK in summer??

Lewes has quite a history, see Wikipedia entry It also has an old family brewery:

nestled right in the town:

Tempting but we resisted sampling their wares. No idea why.

The main street is equally interesting:

and contains what looked like a business run by the captain:

Upset us, you know what will happen to you....

We had quite a result in Saltdean - we took the bus out there and directly opposite the stop was a little tea room which was a) open at 5pm and b) sold the wonderful BoHo ice cream. The walk back to the marina along the lower cliff path was warm sunny and fuelled by carrot cake ice cream. Happy days.

Slightly less happy was the following day  when the captain launched the RIB and used it to scrub off the little grass skirt that we were starting to grow around the waterline. One of the downsides to the lovely weather. We did manage to admire Doris the dredger though:

The process they were following was not really a "process" - seemed that each day the dredger moved to a new area, spent hours being coupled up to the discharge pipe and then did a few minutes work before being moved again. We think that Brighton marina will stay shallow for a long long time.

A forecast of fairly strong easterly or north easterly winds made the prospect of moving east and on to Eastbourne or further less tempting so we called our old overwintering spot (Haslar marina in Gosport) and booked in. There is a reason why and it is not to see / enjoy Gosport.

Bucklers Hard, Lymington to Brighton

Well, after the few weeks of toddler relocation activity, we got the boat moving again. A couple of friends (Ann and Martin, you've met them on here before when they came to Ireland last year) joined us at Bucklers Hard. In case you have forgotten them (they will be most upset of course) here is a reminder:

They look quite happy in this picture. I think that Brexit could not have been mentioned for a few hours. Of course the transport from the marina at Bucklers to the boat on the mid river mooring was not of 5 star quality:

4 up and luggage on board it was a little bit full.

Bucklers Hard itself is a beautifully preserved old shipbuilding village - for those who haven't been there:

There was a long tradtion of buildng wooden navy ships including one that Nelson captained (sorry to any Spanish readers). Wandering around and up to Beaulieu for lunch at the Montague Arms hotel (OK, the cheaper bistro bit) was fun.

We then escaped the Beaulieu river at high water and headed to sunny Lymington for a few nights. Plenty of walking, admiring the wild ponies on the beach:

chilling, drinking gin (sorry Colin, again without you) and generally enjoying the amazing weather we are having in the UK. Here is one of the sunsets to give you an idea:

For the first longer trip since we returned from Guernsey, we decided to head over to Brighton. Hadn't been east for many years so it seemed about time to do so. The optimum departure time would have been first light. We didn't do that. Instead we pushed the tide a lot in the Solent, sitting on the flybridge enjoying the views.

Here is the route:

Just over 10 hours at sea and so many pot markers to avoid on the way. Of course, the England / Panama world cup football game was in the middle of the run so the crew and Martin retired inside for football, beer and crisps. On the flybridge we could not hear the squeals of delight when we scored, Shame, they (goals and hence squeals) from England have been such a rarity.

Having booked into Brighton marina by phone a while ago, it seems that it was a total waste of time. Approaching the entrance we called them on the radio for a berth. Answer was "you will have to head for the east end of the marina, just follow the fairway and we will let you know the berth". Should have smelled a rat then....

In the fairway the message was "yes, with your beam and draft you will need a hammerhead so keep going and you will see our berthing master on the pontoons". We did, he was running around like a demented thing trying to find a spot. It didn't go well. Then they radioed us and asked "do you have channel M on your radio?". No, not on the lovely Icom installed on the flybridge, only on our handheld which was below and we had no desire to fetch it.

OK, we will call you on 80 again they said. The poor dockmaster kept running around looking in vain for a slot. They ended up putting us on what has to be one of the worst spots in Brighton. We were at the end of a cruddy pontoon full of decaying little boats that are full of decaying live aboard types. Here is the neighbour:

Yes, someone lives on that. Here is what he/she has left on the pontoon:

Don't see that ever running again. The view looking out in the other direction is just as appealing:

The poor berthing master was very nice though. However the lady he radioed in the office about the advertised summer 7 nights for 5 berthing deal should not be allowed anywhere near a customer. He looked suitably embarrassed at what she said Poor guy; with that kind of backup he must have a great time!

The marina seems to have been neglected as far as dredging is concerned too. Only the visitors area - where there was no space for us despite pre-booking and giving them all the relevant dimensions -  has 2 metres depth. We just have to sit in the mud at low water - up to 40cm short on depth at springs - and avoid holding up the pontoons on our mooring lines by slackening them off a lot. Unimpressive place now, most unimpressive.

Now the good bits. We briefly saw Ray, the man who owns Blackrock Yachting and has an office here. Shame it couldn't have been for longer.  We found an excellent ice cream shop in the city that makes their own stuff - lovely flavours like carrot cake, pain au raisin etc. Look up BoHo Gelato on Facebook. We had to visit multiple times to make sure we were right about their quality of course.

Brighton has a posh new observation tower:

with a viewing platform on it that looks like a 1960s impression of a space station:

Of course, the more traditional pier still packs in the visitors:

although its twin looks a bit sad after a couple of mysterious fires:

With stunning weather and great gelato, the visit to the city was a resounding hit.

Heady moments

The toddler settling in to Hythe activities continued unabated upon our return to Bucklers Hard. Apart from one little heady interlude that is.

Some time ago, the heads (toilet for the non boating types) in our cabin decided to misbehave. The little lever that operates the electronic flush mechanism stopped returning to the vertical position and became rather weak and floppy. A worrying disease. The lever then seemed to randomly operate the flush and emptying process which is far from ideal. After some examination of the exploded parts diagram it looked like a spring in the control box had failed. Amazingly, despite the age of the unit, a replacement spring was available from the USA via the UK Raritan distributor.

That just left the fun of fitting it and hoping that a broken spring was the only issue. We had asked Colin the BA Captain man (yes, man not transvestite) for any advice on heads removal in a Nordhavn 47. His reply was not helpful but very sensible - "Not a job for the captain, get Yann and Biscuit from Nordhavn Europe to do it!" You can tell he is used to having lots of ground crew to fix his big Boeing toys.

Digging the loo out is fun. Just enough slack in the hoses that connect it to the waste and fresh water systems to pull it forward by just under the width of a hand. Think about that......  Oh, and two bolts that fit it to the base unit that are not captive and just want to fall out once you undo them or try to refit them.. Did we mention that the two bolts don't have a proper head on them so you can slip a spanner underneath the platform to hold them? Instead they have a screw head fitting and you can't get a screwdriver anywhere near them to stop them spinning? Yup, fun and frolics.

Amazingly the rest of the job went well. The control box is wonderfully simple:

- some microswitches and a simple rod mechanism to operate them. The broken spring was replaced and the unit rebuilt and refitted. It all worked well afterwards. In case you have an illogical burning desire to peek behind our heads, here is a picture for you:

Does that make you feel better / has it enriched your life? We hope not.....

What else have we been up to? Well, plenty of house sorting out, lots of RIB use and a TGT (The Guided Tour) of the engine room for a couple of Swedish guys (one worked for Volvo Penta, the other used to work for Nimbus and they were mightily impressed). Also had a day of oil changes (main engine and gearbox, wing engine and gearbox, genset) which produces over 40 litres of waste oil that had to be ferried ashore by RIB and then emptied into the slowest oil tank we've ever used. It was brand new but oil drained in via the grating so slowly. Emptying the old oil involved holding the 20 litre drums at shoulder height whilst pouring it very very gingerly. That deserved and got a G and T afterwards. Surely we don't have to explain G and T too?

We plan to head off soon and use the boat as a boat rather than a floating accommodation block. Bet the weather changes....

Getting frustrated and charged up

Why, oh why do things that should be so simple prove to be so difficult? The first example is moving the boat to Hamble Point Marina.  OK, getting there was prettty easy.  Getting in was the usual MDL stuff up. Rant time...

Sandie from Nordhavn Europe had booked a berth for us a couple of weeks ago. She then contacted them a week ago to confirm and they clearly didn't have the booking despite a previous confirmation. They told her "all booked, but it might not be on the events pontoon as you have requested". The events pontoon is closest to their workshops where lots of very heavy batteries were awaiting us. MDL really look after their commercial tenants.

We duly arrive. All happy after a nice trip from Bucklers Hard, then Phil from Nordhavn told us we were allocated a finger berth and that it looked tight. He wasn't kidding. MDL know the boats but had allocated a berth that couldn't handle our beam. Backing in we were wedged against the motorboat next door:

We didn't really need a bow line....  So, we call the marina. You can use B14 they say. We look at it - even less space. Phil, not amused, goes to the office. "Oh, we don't have any other big free berths" is the reply. He gently told them the boat was booked in, confirmed, requested for the events pontoon and that they had to find a space.

Eventually they said they would get the drystack team to move a boat on the events pontoon so we had space. Knowing this would take forever, Phil moved it wth help from the Osmotech guys working on her.

Every time we come to this shambles of a marina they stuff up a booking that has been made well beforehand. Then they stuff up handling the aftermath. We said that we will never get lifted here again. I think we will never visit again unless the events pontoon space is confirmed in blood. Pathetic pathetic organisation MDL.

The new batteries for the domestics (6) and the thrusters (4) are horribly heavy.   The small thruster ones are 31kg each, the big domestic ones 71kg:

and horribly expensive. Still, the old ones are over 9 years old so they have done well. We had spotted their capacity drop whilst in Guernsey earlier this year and as we hope to visit mainly places with no shorepower for the rest of the summer a new set of batteries now seemed sensible.

Getting them on board was a Yann and Roland blood sweat and tears thing as in parallel Roland was fitting new sheaves to our crane hence it could not be used to lift the batteries in and out:

The eagle eyed amongst you who are also Nordhavn Europe aficionados / sad cases will have noticed that we had all the team bar Sandie helping. Lucky Sandie.

Then the fun started. For some reason unknown to anyone outside their company probably, the manufacturer Lifeline have marginally moved the position of the terminals. Spot the difference, old:

and new:

Yes, before the smart alec types says so the new battery still has the protective covers on the terminals. The actual difference was a few mm but enough to make fitting the link cables (very heavy duty, totally no flexibility in them) a real struggle. Poor Yann had a horrid time. The thruster battery terminals had changed even more and meant that new cables to link them had to be made. That required new crimp on connectors which are seriously heavy duty and not found in the average toolbox.... Duly sourced, Roland made up the new links on his day off  (proper chap) and Yann fitted them.

The one benefit of this short delay was an invite to join a (late) birthday BBQ for Sandie in the Nordhavn office which was most excellent.

For the number lovers, each of the domestic batteries is rated at 255aH. We have 6 but laced together in 3 x 24v banks so we have 765 aH at 24v. Not a good idea to go anywhere lower than half discharge so a useable 380 aH (although we try to use less than that before a recharge to help the battery life). We also try to avoid high discharge loads and when possible make sure they get almost fully charged each time we run the genset in the mornings when "off grid".  AGM batteries don't like lots of partial recharges. Babying the last set of batteries gave us over 9 years use, we hope this lot do as well!

After the fun (for us, not poor Yann!) we had a glorious sun drenched return trip to Bucklers Hard. Dyl the dog was busy visiting laps so that he could see out properly from the flybridge:

Back at Bucklers, Dyl was transfixed by a bucket of crabs brought ashore by a fisherman. The fisherman let a small one loose on the walkway for Dyl and he was smart enough to keep his nose clear (although this one was so tiny that the nip would have been almost undetectable anyway!):

He was more than annoyed when it regained the water. Why, we have no idea.

All in all a good day until returning to the boat by RIB and lifting Dyl onto the bathing platform, the captain managed to flick off the sunglasses you saw in a prior picture. They don't float. Hard to blame Dyl for dropping them or the glasses for not floating.

Toddling and maintaining

Not too many updates recently as we have been focussed on getting the toddlers moved from their Essex abode into our house in Hythe. All the planning came to a head when the removal truck arrived.

They now hold a record. The experienced removal company had used a maximum of 12 of the "wardrobe cartons" that let you hang clothes inside them. That was before toddlerville. They had to build some brand new ones and needed 16 to move two people, not a family of four or five. Actually we say "to move two people". If we broke the 16 down into male toddler storage and female toddler storage you would spot a small imbalance. Most guys can work out the likely split.

Around unpacking boxes and fixing things our various tenants had broken in the house (no comment), we picked up Dyl the dog to look after him for a few days:

You've met him before - he belongs to Andrew and Linda's daughter and we enjoyed his company on our March canal trip. Dylan (to use his proper name) is a cute Welsh terrier and very placid, adaptable, cuddly and gentle. Until he wants to play the foot nibbling game that is.....

He took over the boat and house as his territory pretty quickly:

Not impressed with the lifejacket but happy when he can see out.

We had an impromptu visit from one of the Norn Iron contingent too. Keith was helping deliver a yacht from Holland back to Bangor and needed to head home. So, owing to the captain's irritating ability to pick up a sickness bug (no more details should be added) Keith stayed with the toddlers en route to Southampton Airport. This picture was taken before any alcohol that day we hasten to add:

although the expression might suggest otherwise.

Finally we managed a couple of the building backlog of jobs on the boat.

One was our beloved softstart device that sits in front of our shorepower isolation transformer and lets it "softstart" to avoid tripping the shorepower on the pontoon. It had started misbehaving, not latching in properly when the shorepower lead was plugged in. It would work after a few attempts but was clearly in trouble. Hard to tell from the outside of course:

We managed to find a whole new unit on eBay for about a third the price of one via a dealer. The simplest swap was to remove the working innards of the new one and transplant them into the old case and wiring that was in situ. The old:

and the new:

just sideways.

Transplant done, it all worked OK and we also put some better insulation around the bottom cable entry - you can see how the shielding  doesn't properly protect the cables as they pass through the housing. Professionally installed indeed...

All worked well, good news as when we leave the boat somewhere it is vital to know that any temporary interruption in the shore supply will not be a problem. Defrosted freezers are not nice.

Even better, Keith is a serious electrical engineering type and he sourced a replacement 4 pole contactor for us (the white middle bit) so we can rebuild the failing device into a good spare. It might operate with a Norn Iron accent now though and like the odd glass of Black Bush.