Freedom - sort of anyway

Well, after the weeks of lockdown and being "requested" not to use even the bay area, some light appeared. Amazingly quickly for the rather feeble harbour authority, this appeared on the day that the Welsh assembly announced some easing in the Covid restrictions:

Amazingly they didn't play the "we only allow locking out to sea once a hour" game as they did after the first lockdown. A reason to celebrate? Well, day 1 of no restrictions coincided with this:

So we decided to stay tied up (as long as the mooring lines and cleats on the pontoon remained secure that is).

Instead of a sea trip,  there was the annual fun of changing all the fuel filters. Not that bad a job really, the hardest bit is pumping the fuel into the fresh secondary filters for the wing and genset and then bleeding them. The main engine is much easier - thank you Mr John Deere for simple twist lock filters and a high capacity pump that soon bleeds the system. The wing / genset need way more thumb action on their little pumps.  You do end up with lots of filters to dispose of:

and there are two missing from this picture!

After the gales cleared through, we had the monster excitement of a run around the bay to make sure that all was well with the engines after the captain had been dismembering them and doing some maintenance stuff. Oh yes, the usual demented snail track around the bay ensued:

You can spot where the deeper water is from this rather boring trip.... 

The main engine pulled pretty much the full 2400 rpm that is expected at wide open throttle. You can tell that we are getting short of diesel. When we add around 3.5 tons of fuel, she is less energetic. Even the little 40HP wing engine pushed us around at 5 knots when given a workout. Coming back into the marina, another bertholder kindly captured our return:

Even better - Andy took the side that didn't have the fenders hanging down so things look smarter. You can see the nice green stripe left on the domes though. Another session of standing underneath and getting soaked using the window cleaning poles is needed. Building up the enthusiasm for that is not easy.

After the exciting bay trip, the wing engine had an oil and filter change, so it did not feel left out or unimportant. 104 hours of use to date must make it feel undervalued somehow although we do give it a regular run to check all is well and warm up the innards. At least the nappy rash period is over and it is no longer on baby food (aka break-in oil). Now it gets grown up sump oil like the other machinery on board. 

Maintenance news:

We've mentioned before how the electrical panel gauges fail over time with a smoothing capacitor that gives up in a big way. Well, the inverter voltage output gauge suddenly started reading about 10v lower than expected. Hoping that it was the gauge and not the newish inverters that were at fault, we checked the voltage to the gauge and sure enough, it was a rock steady 230v not the 214 / 213 / 209 being displayed. The meter was removed and was very hot - the sign of one that is about to fail big time. Folks have reported smoke and other nasty things from them so the offending gauge was removed and opened up.

The rogue capacitor is the tall black guy in this picture (and that is NOT a racist comment!):

and they typically  fail after many years of hard use causing wild fluctuating readings. However, our problem was  different one, the capacitor did not look to be "blown" and inspection revealed some overheating elsewhere on a PCB:

 

Spot the dark bit - and it did not smell too good either. So, this time it has to be a new gauge rather than a simple capacitor swap which the ever organised Sandie from Nordhavn Europe has ordered for us. In the meanwhile, we have a small gap in the power distribution panel:

You can see how the local shorepower struggles in the evening to deliver 10 amps (kettle on) and maintain a sensible voltage. 

We mentioned the replacement of the wing engine fuel filter assembly before - well, here is the new picture showing the freshly installed Racor turbine filter with a new fuel hose and a relocated anti siphon loop with a new fixing bracket:

Very happy to have a better filter fitted, the same as the genset and one that makes filter element changes way simpler too. 

Going electric and getting pumped (out)

We mentioned before that the lure of an eBike finally got to us and we tested a couple of possible folding bikes to replace our old "pedal only" jobs. Based on the folded size and weight, the Brompton won so here is the crew with her new trusty steed:

They park rather neatly:

and the piece de resistance, folded up ready for the lazarette:

As the weather dried up, we have been using them quite a lot. Impressed so far. There are three levels of assistance you can have from the motor and so far we have only used level 1 - that is plenty, We want to get some exercise too. The battery range is quoted as between 20 to 40 miles depending upon how much help you ask for. We reckon that 40 is easily achievable locally unless we tackle some of the serious hills.

The weirdest experience was getting an email advising of a recall on the bikes for a firmware upgrade! The captain was well used to factory recalls and software updates from his working life with car manufacturers but one for a bike was novel. 

Massive excitement time - we needed a trip out of the marina with the boat to visit the pump out station on the barrage again. Somehow it feels like an ocean voyage after days of lockdown. We picked a nice calm Sunday, fired up the big Lugger main engine, called the marina for a lock out and then called Cardiff "Barrage Control" as a courtesy to let them know we would be off to the pump out which is all of 50 metres from the marina lock by the way. See our AIS track:

Last time we called them the guy on duty said thanks for letting him know. This time was incredible:

Us: Hello, just to let you know that we are about to lock out from Penarth Marina and go to the pump out facility on the barrage

BC: Do you have the harbourmaster's permission to do that, there is a lockdown.

Us: Er, no, we don't need that, we are just going to the pump out as we've done before during lockdown and other folks do too. It wasn't a problem last time.

BC: Well, all the facilities are locked and you are not allowed on the bay. Why are you on your boat anyway?

Us: We live on it......

BC: I will have to check with the harbourmaster to see if it is allowed

The jobsworth duly called us back and read out the local notice to mariners about Covid rules in a sarcastic voice and suggesting that we didn't know about it. By the way, the NTM does not prohibit use of the bay, it just asks that you refrain from using it! He had no answer as to why the use of the pump out was fine earlier on during lockdown but now was not allowed so we thanked him for all his help (mimicing his sarcastic voice) and telling him that we would just have to discharge into the marina then! He said we would have to talk to the marina management. Local council jobsworth at it's most stupid, 

5 minutes later we headed out of the lock after Phil the Penarth marina berthing master had telephoned the barrage control guy and straightened him out.. We've said it many times and this just emphasises how badly run the bay area is. Rubbish collection from the water, cleaning the visitor pontoons, hopeless management of sea lock access and no stacking of the boats to fit in them. It all seems to be a struggle. Another one of those "if you had to work again then being the harbourmaster here would be so satisfying as you can only make it better" jobs. Mind you, it would entail managing a heavily unionised local council workforce who have had things their own way for so long.... On second thoughts, we will go back to plan A, sorting out Dunstaffnage marina instead.

So, we did manage to empty the black water tank and warm up the big Lugger, not to mention raise our blood pressure a little too.

What other news? Well, Matthew, the owner of the yacht in Neyland that has starred in here before, told us that we were featured in Wales on-line, a well know local news source. Worrying really, we were not sure what we had done to upset the locals bar be English and here. As the article was posted before our trip to the pump out, we knew it could not be from the officious harbour guy. 

Luckily we just happened to be in some pictures that were trying to sell a nearby house:

Apparently the house has, to quote the estate agents, "stunning views". Not sure the Nordhavn is that pretty. Still, estate agents do big things up a bit....

Maintenance news:

The wing engine has, for some strange reason, a Racor filter that uses a canister not one of the nice turbine units as fitted to the genset and main engine. The captain had meant to change it for a turbine unit (way easier to charge the filter, common spares with the genset) for ages but never found  anew turbine filter at a sensible price. Then, late kast year, ASAP supplies had a deal on them. Deal still meant expensive but not eye wateringly so. Hence the captain bought one and it sat waiting for the enthusiasm to fit it. Naturally, the supply hose from the wing engine fuel tank was not going to be long enough but the new filter could be mounted to use the existing outlet hose and earthing straps in a way that sill allowed it to be gravity filled when a filter change was needed. 

Here is the original setup:

As a turbine unit is physically larger, the cooling water hoses that run up to the vented loop would also be in the way and so we needed to have a bracket fabricated to suspend them from the ceiling of the engine room, rather than being attached to the wall.  Getting a new inlet hose made up was easy enough courtesy of M&B hydraulics and their scruffy little shack in Cardiff. Fitting it was OK, just meant a bit of a back breaker as everything had to be done leaning over the wing engine. Now,  we are just waiting for the new stainless bracket to hold the raw water pipes to finish off the job. Will add a "now" picture once it is all completed. 

The old filter assembly is going to a good home - John and Irene who has featured here before have bought a yacht and a backup filter would be handy for their main engine.