Escape of a sort - or it felt like it anyway

The excitement was almost unbearable. Yes, we had a road trip to Hythe for a dentist visit and were let back into the country afterwards too. It felt most strange to drive 320 miles in a day and to see things other than the local Asda store for a click and collect food shop. The poor car was confused too - it tried manfully to head for Asda but was wrestled onto the motorway and forced to do 70 mph again.

Guess what, the excitement continues as although the crew had her fillings fixed, the captain has a cracked tooth which means an implant is needed. So, Hythe beckons again in two weeks time. Yes, the dentist is getting to be our social life. The only challenge is the PPE you need to don whilst there:

 Most fetching but luckily only the dental staff get to see that look.

After one mini escape, we finally managed another. The assistant marina manager Hugh said that he would cut the small forest of weed from around our berth on Saturday if we went out into the bay for a while. So, we got up early (like kids at Xmas time), prepared the boat and called the office to be told that  Hugh was lifting a boat out but was going to call us when he had finished and would come over to sort out the monster weed problem.  We sat and waited and waited and admired the view:

Just before lunchtime we had a call from him (things were taking longer than he had anticipated) and arranged a 2pm departure. Around 3pm Hugh and his little helper made it so after a day of sitting and waiting and wasting the lovely weather on the longest day, we braved the bay. It was a bit busy but we managed to dodge the yachts and racing dinghies. The main engine pulled almost full rpm but the boat speed was down - lots of growth to remove. No overheating at wide open throttle fortunately so the cooler cannot be too bad. We need a proper, longer WOT test to be sure. The little wing engine was down about 200 rpm but that is probably down to the barnacle fouling from the cruise last summer.  It also rolled 100 hours of use:

so it can now officially be treated like an adult. It has been fed break-in oil (for baby engines) up to now but can be weaned onto normal 15-40W stuff from now on.

The fresh water weed and gunge on the hull should get killed off when the boat tastes some salt water again, hopefully quite quickly. We will see!

Penarth marina is undergoing a re-branding exercise. We remember the fun of those from our time at work and remain most sceptical about the benefits. The original operators of Penarth,  Quay marinas "merged" with Dean and Reddyhoff last year (for merged, read were taken over) and the bigger group have re-branded themselves as "boatfolk".  As you can see, the signage hasn't quite caught up yet:

Somehow the old Quay marina sign, the bottom one looks crisper and more legible from a distance too. Progress?

The "boatfolk"  marketing manager has a lot to learn - the marina handbook had only three useful pages (tide times and marina plan) and looks like a kiddies colouring book. The "welcome pack" was equally amusing. If they are trying to attract a much younger audience to boating then fine, but they seem to have forgotten that their target audience also need the cash to buy and run one! The good thing is that the team in Penarth are great so nothing has really changed bar most of the signs.

We stopped for a pump out on the barrage then headed back through the lock to a much less weedy berth:

Once again our trip up and down the bay looks like a demented bee's attempt to get through a pane of glass:

You can tell where the deep water is in Cardiff Bay from our track. The two "sticking out" diversions into shallower stuff were us avoiding a gaggle of sailing things.

So, despite wasting a lot of time we managed to check that the oily bits were working OK and we will prepare for a salty trip soon. Funny how getting out to the muddy murky Bristol Channel seems like a major event. The recalcitrant Welsh government continue to plough their own little furrow and are changing the lockdown rules slower than anywhere else. However, a mid July departure seems possible as overnight stays in other ports might well be allowed then. We have to arrange a lift out to do the annual underwater maintenance. The shaft and cooler anodes must be very sick by now as they were last changed in 17 months ago...... The challenge might be finding somewhere with a big enough lift and the yard space and time to drag us out. The marina lift out teams are going to be very busy as things get slowly unlocked.