When will the weather improve? When we have a sauna!

So, the plan looked like relaunch on Monday 12th at early o'clock to catch the high tide. The hoist crew were coming in very early so we could be afloat at around 7:30am. Tiring just thinking about it. On the preceding Friday, late evening, a somewhat annoyed captain received a nice email with invoices for the work done, confirmation that the shaft was fitted and the calorifier plumbing was completed. Unfortunately it also said that the new transducer had not been fitted for various reasons but that it could be done during the March lift out. The captain graciously replied telling them (again!) it was needed ready for an electronics refresh and that it should be done on Monday with launching delayed to Tues / Weds. Patience is always needed in dealing with marine businesses...

In preparation, the captain again braved the Blue Islands ATR service in the (old) colours of Flybe. Discovering that Flybe themselves are now up for sale only adds to the frisson of excitement / terror involved in using them to get anywhere ever.

To cheer up Captain Rae, this time it was a different aircraft, G-ISLK, Dating from 2000, this plane has a slightly less exotic history than the normal one on the Southampton service (see prior post) having been rattled around by Air Dolomiti. To try and prevent comments about ugly aircraft pictures, this time you are only getting the tail and the queue of brave passengers:

As you can see we were sent out to the plane before they were ready for us. So glad it wasn't raining.

Arriving into Guernsey we landed and made our way towards the apron. Then we stopped and waited and waited. A full 5 mins with the little turboprop whirring away and burning fossil fuel in a way that makes our Nordhavn look like a Green Party advert. Why were we waiting? No idea. We landed at 10:13 and here are the departing aircraft movements:

Nothing moving there. How about arrivals?

nope, no big queue in front or astern of us. Happily the delay in reaching our stand meant missing the once every two hours on Sunday direct bus to St Sampson. This trip was starting out well.

On Monday the sounder was duly fitted, replacing an older Furuno fishfinder unit. Good job too as it looks like the original fit was a poor one with a chunk of Sikaflex trying to level up the through hull fitting. The rather better M and G man ground away a little GRP on the inside and got it seated very nicely:

The new high capacity bilge pump to back up the temperamental Jabsco diaphragm unit was in place and very neatly plumbed and wired in:

Hard to spot in the bottom of the deep bilge area. The new calorifier was most neatly installed too:

Leaving a day for the sealant around the transducer to set, a Wednesday launch was booked. A weather window overnight on Thursday would allow time for sea trials, adjusting the stuffing box as the new packing wears itself in and generally checking that all was well before making an overnight crossing back to the Solent area.

Then it all went wrong. Excited to use the huge new calorifier to make some hot water for on-board showers, the immersion heater (also new) was switched on. The thermostat on it must have been faulty as it duly overheated the water in the tank, produced lots of pressure and caused one of the nice new pipes in the picture above which are rated to 100C and 6 bar pressure to split. The noise and resulting Turkish bath in the engine room was wonderful.

Luckily, there are no electrical things in that area to worry about so no other damage was done. Since the calorifier had been subject to pressures way above the design specification it means replacing the attached pipework and putting a new replacement calorifier in. This is not a 5 minute job (2 elapsed days) but the new unit had to arrive first.

Time to fly back rather than live in mid air for a while with an ever diminishing holding tank capacity free.  A most irritating problem, not the yard's fault this time but it just extends the out of water period. Good to let the hull dry out a bit we guess although the epoxy used with the Coppercoat probably stops that! Refits / replacements are such fun.