#dishwashergate and other bits

Whilst in Gosport, a perfectly natural reaction is to try and escape. So, we took the excellent cycle path up to Fareham and also to Lee-on-Solent. Some nice views heading there:

and even some intrepid paddleboarding types:

All most civilised until whilst sitting on the sea front having a coffee we were accosted by two elderly and clearly lonely gentlemen who used the Brompton bikes as an excuse to start a conversation. We must look way friendlier than we are. On the way back, into the teeth of the F6 wind, we were happy to have some electric assistance.

A walk around Gosport (brave we know) let us meet a proper Gosport lady - wandering along the High Street, clutching an open can of Special Brew. So good to be here again, we fit in so well. Enough fun though, some pain was needed. First of all we fitted the new stainless steel tap into the aft cockpit sink:

after all the earlier amusement of moving the mounting hole a centimetre or so inwards to give enough space for the retaining nut.

Then it got serious. We've mentioned before how the Miele dishwasher had started to misbehave, needing some persuading each time for the pump to work and sometimes stopping before the rinse and drying part of the cycle. A little inconvenient and feedback from other Nordhavn owners with the same machine suggested that it was a common fault as they age. We guess that 14 isn't a bad age for a dishwasher with 12 years of heavy use. 

The big challenge is replacing it. Mainly because when the boat was being commissioned in the UK, a water based heating / aircon system was fitted by the Keto guys on the Hamble and they installed an air handler right on top of the plumbing for the dishwasher with pipework that does not allow it to be moved out of the way. Hence the swap was going to be another of those "interesting" jobs that needed several plumbing changes to both the heating system and the dishwasher pipework. Luckily for us, but not for him, Biscuit the ex Nordhavn Europe man had completed this job before on other 47s and is the closest to an expert that you would ever find. The old machine sat looking rather sad and doomed:

awaiting its fate.

A nice new Bosch machine was delivered to Biscuit's house (and he didn't just keep it and eBay it, honest sort of chap) ready for the fun to start. 

Luckily, our air handler was not in the worst possible position for access to the dishwasher pipework:

One unexpected discovery was that the little Seagull water filter not only feeds the dedicated faucet and the ice maker in the freezer - it had been plumbed into the dishwasher cold feed too. Poor little cartridge! Whist the plumbing was exposed, a new filter cartridge was fitted (it was due) and some prep work for fitting isolating valves to help with any future replacement or to stop leaks.:

The new dishwasher looks rather "modern" in comparison to the old one:

Internet linked - oh yes in a 50 foot boat you really need a message to say the program has completed.

As is normal with boats, you take one step forward and one back (or on a good day sideways). The small Webasto boiler had been getting more and more reluctant to fire up and so the time had come to send it to the nice folks at Butler Technik for a check and overhaul. Hopefully just a decoke but as it is elderly and has never been touched we thought that it should go to someone who knows about such things rather than be ripped apart by us. It lives happily in one of the engine room alcoves with the freshwater pumps:

and the area looked a little bare after taking it out:

You can spot the new isolation valve added to the coolant hose to help with future removal - this time we had to drain quite a lot of the system. The boiler was boxed up and shipped off to the experts.

Then it all went a bit social. We met up with Paula and Nigel for an outside lunch, then Anne and Izzy for the same. After months of seeing nobody and eating on board it seemed very strange, almost normal again really. Bar the masks. And sitting outside a perfectly serviceable restaurant in the freezing cold when it had perfectly functional inside tables. 

Falmouth to Gosport (yes, we went to Gosport. Read and see why)

After catching up on a little sleep, we happily launched the RIB and headed ashore at Trelissick to get the legs working. 30 hours or so underway and they do tend to seize up a bit. The woodland walk hills seemed steeper and longer than we remember. Is that the result of seizing up or age (a couple of years since we were here)? Please don't answer that....

On Sunday, Norman and Julie drove down to Trelissick and after a restorative coffee and brownie sitting outside the National Trust tea rooms (excellent by the way) we walked the other path and then enjoyed lunch outside a pub that we have visited with them many times before. It felt quite safe and "normal" - the outside area is a steep terrace and there are individual tables on individual areas cut into the rock. All very civilised. Roxy and Indie, the two labradors seemed happy as well: 

even if our food was torturing their noses:

We returned to the boat by RIB and then headed a short distance further to say hello to the crew of Coracle (a Nordhavn 40) who had arrived whilst we were out and anchored just above the Turnaware bar. Tea was enjoyed in the cockpit and a catch up after many months thanks to Covid and lockdowns. They even took a pic for us as we departed - you can just about spot our boat too:

As you can see, it was sunny but chilly....

The forecast had increasing strength easterly winds during the week and as we needed to be in the Solent area by the 26th, we decided to have one long trip rather than coast hop via all the delightful stopping off points that this area offers. Shame but we will be back later in the year to enjoy them. Optimum timing looked to be around 10am off Falmouth harbour so a nice civilised departure time too. We acted as camera boat and got some pictures of Coracle at anchor:

and you can see Michael on the flybridge doing exactly the same thing. We looked like:

The start of the trip was a bit bumpy with smallish waves (only around a metre and a half) but with a very short wavelength meaning the boat would rise on one then fall onto the next. These had built up with the overnight SE'ly wind and the "wind over tide" at the time. Things were due to calm down as the wind strength reduced and it backed to NE'ly according to the forecast. The bumpy bit did not stop the captain from having a snooze in the pilothouse though:

 

Heading past Plymouth and the iconic Eddystone lighthouse things worked as per the forecast, the waves subsided and the sun peeped out. We were far enough away from Eddystone to only be able to capture this picture, nothing more detailed, sorry:

Start Point was also nice and benign, here is how it looks from the helm seat:

and here is how it looks on the plotter:

The usual night of watching fishing boats with no AIS wander around in front of us ensued, together with some pot marker dodging thanks to seeing them on the FLIR. We are still deeply in love with that piece of kit. 

Sunrise as we approached the Isle of Wight was pretty stunning:

with the island having a little mist hanging around the surface of the sea. That means you cannot see the Needles in this picture:

but you get an idea of how it all looked:

As we entered the Solent we had to push against the tide initially as we had made better time than expected. Anchored off Yarmouth was this:

She is called Elandess and for anyone who has used (or should that be "been ripped off") by using Travelex, you helped to buy her. She won plenty of awards including one for her styling that frankly, leaves us cold. Have a look at the gushing praise for her styling in this internet report. 

It felt strange to be back in the Solent area again, but we soon realised why we don't miss it that much during the summer. Have a look at the number of AIS targets shown here on a weekday early in the boating season:

add in the number of non AIS users and you get the idea of how much busier this is compared to the places we like to visit. Heading into Portsmouth harbour we had the usual wait for the ferries even though the fast cat is still not running to the Island. Welcome back to the busiest boating area we guess.

Heading through the Solent we were photographed by David Potter who contributes images to Marinetraffic, hence we got this one:

and yes, it was millpond calm. Chilly though, you can see that only half the pilothouse door was open.

We happily berthed on a hammerhead berth in Haslar marina, where we had spent a winter a few years ago. Gosport is not the centre of the universe but Haslar is fine. It is also for free berthing for us as it is part of the same marina group as Penarth. We just pay for the electricity used. Cost is one good reason to be here. The other is that we need to swap out our dishwasher which has been misbehaving for quite a while now. More on that in a future post....

The route to the Solent is another simple enough one:

and if you look closely you can see one spot in the track where we seem to be heading in a strange direction. That was avoiding pot markers as we started crossing Lyme Bay.

As for maintenance - nothing to report, sorry. The big Lugger was happy, the little one (wing engine) had a run to get up to temperature just before we arrived outside Portsmouth when we had the required wide open throttle run to clean up the main engine. Checking oils and coolants afterwards confirmed they were happy too. Might nip up the stern gland on the main engine a bit as it is dripping a little more than needed but to be honest, that helps cooling and isn't a big issue.

All in all happy to have completed the two longer runs in nice weather so that we are in the right place for jab no 2, #dishwashergate and to sort out some sickly cameras in the CCTV system.

Penarth to Falmouth

For once, the world of weather was kind. The forecasts said that there would be gentle easterly winds which are pretty good for the trip around Land's End. They also said that they would stay that way for several days - even better, letting the normal Sw'ly swell die down. Seeing a couple of days with near perfect forecasts we had to go for it and escape Penarth (before the next lockdown perhaps?) 

The timings for a trip worked out well too. It looked like locking out from the bay a couple of hours before high water and running a little harder than normal would allow us to take advantage of the tides and have quite a quick trip. So, we did just that. Leaving Penarth for the 8am barrage lock, we followed a local charter fishing boat called Anchorman. She is the tidiest charter boat ever and Dave the skipper is always cleaning, polishing and maintaining her.  He kindly took some pictures for us as we were waiting:

 

And then helped with our lines in the lock too. There are floating pontoons but they are so high that we cannot open our side door which makes stepping off tricky as it has to be done from the bathing platform which is well below the pontoon height.  Out to sea conditions were perfect. Very little wind, initially astern of us and wall to wall sun as well. Shame it was only about 10 centigrade outside or it would have been perfect for a flybridge trip. Instead we enjoyed the calm seas and sun from the pilothouse:

Pottering along the north Cornish coast, the winds died down even further:

True wind speed of 0.2 knots? Pretty calm. A little fair weather cloud built up before sunset and treated us to glorious skies:

Then we settled in for the night-time run down to and around Lands End. The captain enjoyed watching some dolphins performing on the FLIR image as darkness set in. The crew was on duty later on when we were called on the radio by Falmouth coastguard at 2.40 am. Most strange, only happened once before and that was when the rescue helicopter pilot who had landed his winchman on us a few hours before wanted to get some of the photos we took! The crew refuses to use the radio, claiming her VHF course was ages ago and she would not know the answers to any questions anyway so the captain had to rouse himself.  It turned out that they saw we were planning an inshore passage not via the traffic lanes but on the AIS system, we showed a length of 40 metres.

Er, what??? The captain checked the AIS and sure enough over the winter it had decided to stretch us from 15m x 5m to 40m x 6m. No idea why. Reading the Furuno AIS manual, it said that a password was needed to access that setup information which was only held by Furuno dealers. Great. Some 3am internet searching (yes, we still had a signal amazingly) found the key sequence needed and the boat was restored to her former size. The vessel type was confused as well, apparently we had turned into a fishing boat. With a grey hull and workboat looks we've often been likened to a military craft, never a fishing one though.  

We rounded Land's End in the calmest conditions ever then headed east as the sun rose.

Another great start to the day. It was so calm we cut inshore around the Lizard peninsular to shave a little distance off the trip. Normally we stay well off to avoid the overfalls and generally sloppy sea conditions there.

A little wide open throttle run towards the Falmouth harbour entrance and then into one of our happy places. The estuary is so so pretty and restful. We headed up to our favourite spot, a mid river pontoon just above the King Harry ferry and Smugglers cottage only to find it was already full - the first weekend that English boaters were allowed to stay on board after the Xmas Covid lockdown. That meant heading back to the mid-river pontoon just above the estuary itself.  We didn't feel cheated with views like these from our mooring:

After some recovery time, we took the RIB upriver to Trelissick and went for a walk around the woods. A couple of laid up ferries this time, showing the impact of Covid / Brexit on the truck and passenger ferry business. The European Seaway has an interesting history in service, worth a Google search (other search engines are, of course, available):

 Laying alongside her was the Pride of Burgundy:

an elderly tug and the strange orange and green thing in the foreground. It was good to have a walk after the trip. Amazingly we only took 26 hours from Cardiff to Falmouth harbour entrance, the tides and rpm planning (1650) worked well. 

Maintenance news:

Nothing to report apart from the strange AIS setup issue that we reported on earlier. The settings had been last changed in 2009 when we bought the boat and had worked perfectly until this trip. We had fired up the equipment during the lockdown from time to time as well. All most strange.... 

Pre Departure stuff

With the English lockdown coming to an end, well an easement, self catering stays are allowed and so we could visit other locations by boat again. To prepare for our departure we got busy(ish) tidying up the boat as over the winter things had migrated from lockers and cupboards to be strewn everywhere (or so it seemed).

The new voltage meter we needed arrived courtesy of Sandie from Nordhavn Europe and was fitted:

You can see how the new gauges don't have a diffuser panel fitted and so are brighter and starker than the originals.

The main engine was treated to a new air filter and the aircon raw water pump was bled (one of those trying to get behind the genset jobs which we love deeply). 

As the planned first run was going to be around to Falmouth (30 hours or so), the little furry visitor needed to go back to her owner. Izzy has amazing bladder control but not that good and she steadfastly refused to "go" on the boat despite trying to tempt her with astroturf in the past. So, we had a long day road trip, dropped off our car into storage and returned Izzy to her owner. That left us ready to head off when the weather decides to play ball. A big high pressure was promised and some lighter winds with something easterly in them too. Might just work out....

Fur, diesel, listing and polishing

As part of a dentist trip, we collected our little goddog to look after her for a few days as her owner Anne was off for shoulder surgery to correct a very painful and debilitating calcified tendon problem. As you can see, Anne being incapacitated for a while meant that Izzy had become rather furrier than normal. Despite the copious amounts of nose fur, she still managed to see her ball to chase it. We have no idea how, she must be a determined little dog: 

So, she was booked into the groomer and came out half the dog. It must have felt for her as though she had been through a cataract operation with the improved eyesight afterwards. Being groomed is tiring:

As you can see, the princess likes a nice soft spot to snooze in.....

Lockdown amusements included some polishing of the hull and transom on nicer days, some teak cleaning (luckily we don't have much of the stuff) and plenty of walks and runs for the dog. We also had several email exchanges with Lars (he has been in here before so keep up!) about buying a boat and how Brexit has made things massively complicated for him. The VAT rules now make it financial madness to buy the boat he likes in Finland and bring it back to the UK for a couple of years before moving it back into the EU. Similar problem if he buys a UK VAT paid boat to use here for a couple of years and then wants to take it to Croatia for the longer term. For us, the rules about what foodstuffs can not be brought into the EU put us off visiting any EU countries and  Northern Ireland too until things get clarified or become more sensible. Having no dairy or animal products on board would be a challenge. We could have one fish on board and up to a fixed weight limit of honey. Oh yes, plenty of regulations you can fall foul of... We've no desire to be in the first tranche of boats that over zealous EU customs guys want to check. Kind of limiting even when lockdown eases.....

We did have one nice Easter surprise though. Lars' wife, Birgit is a renowned baker and this typically German present arrived by post, wrapped as securely as the radioactive waste that is transported to Sellafield (she worked in a sorting office as a student and saw how parcels get treated):

Post photo, it was enjoyed as an Easter treat - very nice indeed. Izzy was upset that she is not allowed such stuff but some ring fun in the park made up for it. When she chases the ring and grabs it, sometimes it ends up making her go partially blind again. She still manages to run back to us in triumph somehow:

Perhaps it is a bit like fitting blinkers to a horse?

One job that needed to be done was to "swing" the fluxgate compass fitted to the autopilot. It seemed to have lost the setup last year during lockdown with the heading being up to 15 degrees out compared to the Furuno satellite compass. That was fun when the Furuno kit sent a course to steer to the autopilot which then went 15 degrees off course to start with (in some compass directions). So, after the fuel tank fun (see maintenance news below) we took the boat into the bay and did a few slow circles using the wing engine to allow it to re-calibrate itself. The results looked way better and the first sea trip of the year should prove the point. On the way back in we stopped at the fuel berth and replenished what we had burned this winter for heating and genset use. Not sure if Guernsey will reopen to pleasure craft from the UK with no quarantine / testing requirements soon so it seemed like a sensible (if more expensive) thing to do. 

Maintenance News:

We reported ages ago that the fitting from the bottom of the starboard diesel tank which leads to the pump and polishing filter had a little film of diesel forming on one joint. Luckily it was the pump side of the valve rather than between the tank and the valve. Had it been weeping there and suddenly got worse, we could not have stopped a more serious leak without pumping out the whole tank.

Well, the little leak didn't get worse but as it was not going to fix itself, we had to do so. As the fuel levels were low, it seemed like a good time. Sort of. The valve is hidden in a little cupboard area with a small hinged access cover:

Which is the small grey part at the bottom of the picture with the label on it.

Getting to the valve you have to take off the fire extinguisher and then the panel that holds it to reveal:

the little GRP moulding running across the top of the area makes getting to things so easy... You can see how many spanners were tested before finding the ones that would just about fit.

Access to the valve is so poor that we are sure that in the factory they fitted the diesel plumbing then added the water pipes that you see running down the left hand side of the void. These pipes make getting a spanner onto the valve and fittings tricky to say the least. Especially as you need a 1" spanner to hold the valve and they tend to be long and wide things! 

The first part of the fun involved pumping about 700 litres of fuel into the port tank to empty this one. Although we did not need to disturb the fittings from the valve to the tank, it would be easy to upset them when trying to undo the offending parts and cause a leak. 700 litres heading for the bilge is not a good idea. It takes quite some time to move all that fuel and the boat lists nicely to port afterwards. So nicely that a resident in a nearby house called the marina office to say we were in trouble and the office sent two dockmasters in their workboat to check up on us and make sure that all was well. The crew, who was busy in the galley, explained that this was self inflicted and that if the repair went OK, we would be pumping ourselves back upright shortly. Nice that someone noticed though.

Here are the valve and fittings showing how little access you have:

and here it is dismantled ready to clean up:

As mentioned before, the factory seem to use a sealant on all the pipes that ends up as a white semi-solid substance and this is the third diesel joint that had started to weep. We guess that as the boat is now 14 years old, that is OK really. After a good clean up, the adaptor was refitted using Wurth pipe sealant rather than white goo and the fuel hose was then reattached.

Pumping some fuel back in to check the seal and start to rebalance the boat was a good feeling. An important job completed as that meant we were able to put some fuel in to replace what we have burned on heating and the genset this winter and be sort of ready to head off once the English lockdown restrictions ease after the 12th.