Maintenance catch up time - for the boat and our goddog

Oh yes. Since the boat had been ashore for way longer than planned / promised / wanted we had quite a lot of catch up to do. This post will be tedious. Go get a coffee and chocolate (or even better a large gin). then skip to the end of it. There you will learn a bit about our much more interesting goddog.

First job was one that had been brewing for a while. The coolant pump on the genset was weeping a little coolant out of the telltale hole. It was time for replacement. Getting to it means dismantling the end of the generator housing to allow sensible access but the physical removal of the pump is fine. Here is a coolant-pumpless genset:

The funny looking beige bits are because one job always turns into more. The brackets holding the alternator that are normally well hidden became exposed in all their slightly rusty glory. It looks as if they were not painted with the genset in the factory - just a little thin grey primer on them. So, they got some paint as a treat. Seems strange as the exact same wing engine setup has nice factory painted white bracketry for the alternator. Perhaps they work on the "if it is on show" basis.

Suitably rebuilt, the coolant refill did not go well. Some of it decided to make a bid for freedom from the hose that attaches to the bottom of the coolant pump. Grr. Taking it off and removing the hose clip revealed that the Northern Lights factory had used one cheap hose clip indeed - all nicely ridged on the inside and with sharp edges and that had cut into the hose:

Whilst the clip was undisturbed, all was well. Luckily (amazingly?) the long and shaped hose had enough movement in it to allow the top damaged bit to be trimmed off and still fit. Not having a suitable sized nice band clamp on board the Captain went into the marina chandlery. He saw many hose clips but no band clamps. He knew it was the sort of place that focuses on selling clothes and "look good stuff" when the "do you have a band clamp suitable for a 44mm OD hose?" got the "what is a band clamp?" response.

There was a lot of discussion on the Nordhavn owners group about the latest version of the John Deere coolant and using it in generators / wing engines. The new Coolguard 2 is an OAT formulation and the report is that "it might cause some seal problems / leaks in generators". Well, as we had a weeping coolant pump (and they are expensive) the genset was refilled with old style low technology coolant instead. Just in case. We will do the same for the wing engine soon too.

Whilst the genset was being tickled, we treated it to new fuel filters too. The removed primary racor element shows a nice red stain from the fuel but none of the black asphaltene residues that settle out if you don't dose the diesel with something nice like Stanadyne performance formula:

For the health and safety types amongst you, please note the nice gloves.

The upper sight gauge on the fuel supply tank had developed a weep too on the lower fitting. Annoyingly (stupidly?) this had been taken off a couple of years ago and the main bolts that fix it to the tank had been resealed. As the bottom fixing was fine, it was not disturbed. Silly captain - should have done both at the time. Still, it didn't take long to remove it:

renew all the O rings, add some thread sealant to the bottom blanking plug to be sure to be sure and refit it all:

Oh, and a 24v bulb had blown in one of the engine room lights too. Seriously stressful replacing that.

What is left? Oh boy, quite a list. Will report as we work our way through it. Mainly routine annual maintenance luckily bar a couple of enhancements / repairs to the Steelhead crane that need to happen.

Goddog update

For the animal lovers or the mildly curious, we have to report that our goddog Izzy has been through some maintenance of her own. She has been done. For the non native speakers, spayed. If you are squeamish, look away now or drink more gin.

There will be no more cute little puppy pictures to share with you, just this scar:

and the sad face during her recovery:

She is so good at looking sad. The crew is (worryingly) picking up tips from her.

Finally afloat again and heading for Lymington

Previously, we mentioned that the fates were conspiring against us for a relaunch and trip back to the Solent area. As a reminder we needed a low enough wind strength to allow a relaunch and a high enough tide to get out of St Sampson harbour over the failed flap gate which is stuck in the up position and hence neap tides are a no go. Finally it all came together. Miracles do happen, even in January.

We took the ugly little ATR from Southampton (no picture as it offends the shortly to retire 787 chap Captain Rae) and were happily reunited with our  Nordhavn getting a lift there from the kind oyster lady. (Little memory test for you all).

The boat was ready to go, the grot from the nearby power station had been washed off too. (As an aside, it seems that the power supply to the island from a cable to France has been interrupted for a while and the two big ships' diesel engines in the power station called Trudy and Freddy have been busy generating electricity and chucking out oily sooty pollution too). Marine and General have a deal with them whereby they wash off boats that are on their hardstanding and bill the power generating company. Must add several pounds to each consumer's bill during the year!

Things felt quite homely despite being propped up in the air. So nice to reclaim the boat and start to remember what life on her is like. (Good by the way!)

A day of doing things like changing the main engine coolant followed. For those with a moderate technical interest, the Lugger / John Deere engine is wet lined to allow easier rebuilds and so is a bit fussy about having good coolant inside it. For everyone else, we drain out about 23 litres of  expensive two year old coolant and replace it with new expensive coolant.

The relaunch went well:

Kieran, the hoist operator is good and well deserved his Costa coffee that we delivered from across the road.

Enjoy that nice copper coloured bottom for the last time. Next scheduled haul out will be spring 2020 and things should be green by then - partly slime, partly oxidised coppercoat.

We decided against a fuel top up as we will burn quite a bit on trips around this winter and on heating too. The plan is a trundle back to Guernsey in the spring to top up so we have full tanks ready for a run north - hopefully Orkney and Shetland but the weather will decide our final destination as always. With the Brexit stupidity going on we decided that the Baltic has to wait until we know what is going to happen, if we need visas, if we will end up in jail for using red diesel in the EU etc etc.

The good news after launch was - no leaks. The bad news was - no leaks. Confused? Well, the stern gland is supposed to drip a little but it steadfastly refused to. New shaft, new packing, all very tight and leak resistant. The follower was backed right off, in and out of gear and reverse, moved the boat to a berth in St Sampson marina, still no leaking. Eventually the captain got it to behave and we've never been so happy to see water coming into the boat before, albeit in small amounts.

A night on the berth there was noisy and a bit bumpy. It reminded us why the Guernsey harbours in a strong wind with anything "east" in it are very unpleasant indeed. We wanted to get afloat on the Friday afternoon as the forecast for the following week was disgusting - strong easterly winds! There was a little weather window on the Saturday that we could use to scuttle across the channel in. OK, scuttle is relative in a Nordhavn. We just wanted to avoid what was coming - see the red strong wind warning areas on the met office chart:

:

As you can see, that is the entire country....

We headed off at 5am. Pitch black, still a force 5 from the south but way better than the 7s from the day beforehand. Heading up the Little Russel channel we were very conscious of the pot marker menace and so we had our searchlight on, illuminating the area just ahead of us. Good thing, the crew spotted one only a few metres ahead of us and we managed to avoid running over it. The stress was not over - the previously slightly leaky sterngland became as tight as the proverbial duck's ass. It resisted kind attention from the captain, hard astern sessions, a totally free follower and more astern but it seemed that the crew swearing at it had the desired result as a nice gentle wet patch developed underneath it and the temperature of the stuffing box dropped.

The route is a well known one:

with the S curve to allow the tide to do its thing rather than fight it all the time. It was grey and uninviting out to sea with rain showers, a couple of metres swell from the west and waves on top of that from the southerly wind. "Sloppy and confused" is a good description - the stabilisers were busy knocking off the roll from the waves on the stern quarter and swell on the beam. The autopilot fought them gamely to point us roughly in the right direction. When the tide turned to go westerly and the swell / wave combination reached its peak the stabilisers actually used their full deflection a couple of times. Not common at all.

The TSS (traffic separation scheme area) threw up the usual gaggle of big guys who looked kind of threatening in the grey gloom and rain:

Despite the volume of them about:

we only had to divert once to go astern of a particularly ugly freighter.

We finally zoomed up the side of the Isle of Wight thanks to a fair tide and crept into the Lymington river in the dark with just enough water under the keel. It is getting pretty shallow in places now and fortunately we did not meet a ferry in the fairway where he would have hogged the deeper bit!

A nice berth in the Yacht Haven awaited us after 13.5 hours underway doing what can only be described as a delivery trip rather than fun. We did get a few dolphins playing with us to brighten things up. The boat worked OK, but the shaft alignment will need to be checked after everything has settled down back in the water as at normal cruise rpm there is more shaft movement than there ought to be.

We happily collapsed, fired up the heating but were too tired to even get excited about food. Just pleased to be afloat again. What next? Well, all the pent up maintenance stuff that we haven't been able to do over the last few weeks awaits. Lovely.