Visitors, bikes and moving berths, very carefully

Whilst in Gosport, to take our minds off the surroundings, we did a few bits and bobs. One of them was to repaint the pedal on the captain's Brompton bike which had lost some paint thanks to his failure to negotiate a dropped curb: 

Sometimes it is good to feel that you have fixed something. Little things pleasing little minds perhaps? By the way, the pedal did get sprayed matt black after the primer. As a treat, the bikes then went to Lee-on-Solent and again to Fareham using the good local cycle paths. We also made a trip to the Nordhavn Europe Office and saw Neil and Phil. This was during the mini heatwave that the south coast was enjoying and so the Covid friendly precaution of having all the doors and windows wide open was much needed. We were most amused at the door prop in use:

Very appropriate in the heatwave. However, Lugger Bob (The Northern Lights engine guru) would argue that Deere Coolguard II is not good for the Deere engines like ours as it is an organic acid formulation which is supposed to promote leaks from coolant pump seals etc. So we hope this is purely a doorstop.

Back in Sunny Gosport, the pig ugly Virgin liner headed out again making lots of noise and wash:

Hope it stays away this time! We were treated to a couple of special visitors too. First of all we collected Izzy the goddog. She was delighted to leave home as Anne, her owner, was looking after a French bulldog puppy who was determined to annoy Izzy at every possible opportunity. Izzy was so keen to escape that she queued up at the car door. As things were so hot, we simply sat on the flybridge in the shade and enjoyed the breeze. The question is, was Izzy eating bacon or just busy with her tongue?

Our social life picked up again when Tina came over from the Isle of Wight. She is going to be an Izzy minder this summer and so it was important that they got reacquainted. It seemed to go well:

When the temperature dropped a bit, we managed a walk to the lovely village of Alverstoke and had a nice protracted lunch at the Albany hotel. The area is such a contrast to the modern horrors of Gosport that they must hate that their postal address has Gosport included in it. When we came back, we needed to swap berths. The marina folks told us that B37 was empty and could be ours for as long as we needed (no idea about Mr Toddler's hospital appointments yet). They also said it was a nice 17 metre berth and wide too. Hum, what wasn't mentioned was the access to it. Here is how it looks on the Haslar marina berthing map thingy (the longest finger on B pontoon):

No big deal?  Well, here is how Google maps sees it - yes, it is the long empty one.....

The Haslar map conveniently does not show the long Royal Naval Sailing Association pontoon that runs the entire length of A, B and C pontoons and is very close indeed. To help you judge the space involved, we are nearly twice the size of the yachts you can see nearby.

 

Approaching from the bottom of the picture, you have to nearly T-bone the yacht on the RNSA pontoon to port, persuade the stern around then back up avoiding the boat alongside and the end of the finger pontoon. Kind of reversing around the corner like in a driving test. The captain had to relent and use the thrusters for this one. How a longer boat than us would get in is a moot point. How we will get out is similarly tricky as we have to reverse the shuffle then back out for about 100m passing further pontoons with similarly small gaps.  No chance to turn around and motor out forwards. We really understand why this berth is empty! However, as we said before, any port in a storm and all that.... At least this one has 32 Amp power. Yes, that is us trying to find a silver lining to the cloud.

Maintenance news:

The waterline was very messy after our long period of inactivity in Dartmouth and here. So, the RIB was launched and the captain had the fun of scrubbing it from the dinghy. Poor boat really needs a lift out now.  Just to add to the captain's happiness, he also gave the holding tank a clean out too. Might as well get all the fun jobs done in one day.

On our trip over from Dartmouth the main engine temperature was showing low and a little "scientific jiggling" of the temperature sender connector fixed it. So, the connector was taken apart and cleaned up as a belt and braces thing:

Hope it hasn't disturbed the earlier "fix" but we will not know until we have a proper run again and get the very bored main engine up to working temperature. 

Overnight there was a HUGE thunderstorm that was not predicted with some vicious winds and torrential rain. Since the met office had forecast 9mph wind with 20 mph gusts, we hadn't bothered to remove the bimini cover. Instead the wind did its best to remove the cover for us. It ended up ripping out a row of stitching that holds a pocket for one of the spreader bars. Not that serious but we have got to find someone to re-stitch it now.  This is the second time we've had a bit of damage to the cover thanks to unexpected high winds. Both times have been in Haslar marina. We really should learn from our mistakes.

Canine invasion, posh Nordhavn 47 time and playing chauffeur

We were a bit tired after arrival in Haslar. The captain especially so thanks to the night time pot marker moment that the crew enjoyed. So, after a walk to the shops we were happy to have a chilled time on the flybridge with Anne, Izzy and Izzy's friend Barney:

Barney is a significantly larger cockapoo then Izzy, but she loves blondes so he is her buddy:

He thinks that he is a lapdog and loves attention. the only problem is that he is 18Kg or so and you really know when he sits or walks on you. After Anne left with Barney (she was looking after him for the day) we kept little Izzy and took her for a paddle as it was rather warm:

Back on the flybridge so that Izzy could dry off, we spotted the Hugo Boss racing yacht heading out to sea. No idea why - the Solent was going to be heaving with boats and at the speed they sail it must be like piloting a dodgem car. Here is a poor picture of the strange looking craft that we had berthed next to before, taken quickly from the flybridge:

On the subject of strange looking craft, the new Virgin liner "Scarlet Lady" returned to Portsmouth with much tooting and fanfare:

Liners seem to get uglier and uglier - or perhaps we are just very old and set in our ways. The Cunard stuff still looks much nicer. A floating Covid breeding ground at the moment? We feel much safer on our little Nordhavn. 

As the weekend weather was rather warm and sunny the boating madness of the south coast got worse. Here is the Marinetraffic AIS picture for Sunday lunchtime. Add in all the boats without AIS or with it turned off and you get an idea of how wild it was:

We didn't venture out into the carnage - instead we took Mr Toddler to his hospital appointment along nicely empty roads as everyone was either at the coast or enjoying their back garden on the hottest day of the year so far. We also popped into Ocean Village in Southampton to check on Malaspina:

Martin and Inge's lovely Nordhavn 47 lives there but thanks to Covid they have struggled to get over to the boat from Hong Kong recently. We just checked that all was well, ran the engines for them and admired how smart she is compared to our poor battered version. Living on board for many years does cause plenty of bumps and marks inside. It was also nice to see relatively empty lockers compared to our very full ones....

We did discover that they have a dying panel gauge so after conferring with Martin, we will pop back sometime to disconnect it. Might even take it away and try to fix it with a soldering iron and new capacitor if we are feeling extra kind / keen. We can probably afford the 20p or so that a new capacitor costs. 

Dartmouth to Gosport (Haslar time again)

All good things coming to an end. Oh yes. Despite the lovely location and most social time, we needed to move. Why? Well, we wanted to be back in the Solent area to take Mr Toddler for his hospital appointment, having already delivered Mrs Toddler for hers a few days ago. The problem is the total lack of free berths there. We needed to be in the place for an "unspecified period" of time as we didn't know if there would be a follow-up appointment. Impossible to get. So, we asked the Penarth manager if he could find us a spot in Portland - another Boatfolk marina. Stuart tried for us, failed but without prompting kindly called his colleague Ben in Haslar who said they would find a slot for us somehow to help out. Brilliant news. OK it is Gosport again but beggars and choosers and all that.....

The ebb tide roars through Dart Marina so it meant a departure at the optimum time for the tides was going to be "interesting". Possibly messy too with a large Fairline Targa thing alongside us. Having stayed in Dartmouth for ages, the marina folks were very kind and allowed us to wait on the berth until slack water, late afternoon.

As we headed off, John and Kath acted as official photographers for us which was very kind indeed. Backing off the berth:

and underway, just after the crew had retrieved the fenders so looking a bit tidier:

As we passed through the town, Simon, Amanda and Jack came out to make sure that we were leaving in their Dory:

We will not mention the lack of lifejackets - we know that the Dory used to be marketed as unsinkable but...  They were also sporting a rescue flag:

which you can just read if a bit backwards. Frankly we didn't think we needed that in the river - everything seemed to be working OK despite the long time gap since the last sea voyage.

They were official video boat:

you can see that we had polished the port side of the hull whilst in the Dart:

Rather a lot of boat pictures we know. Sorry about that but it is so rare to get any of us underway. 

Out to sea it was a glorious day, sitting on the flybridge, calm seas (around 0.2 metre waves only) and very light winds:

Yes, the true wind speed did drop to under 1 knot.  We had a most gentle run, retiring to the pilothouse for dinner with rather nice blue views:

and a bit of Kylie's bum to enjoy too. She still has her wing around Patrick, they seem to be inseparable. 

There was a stunning sunset to enjoy as well:

then it was the usual radar and FLIR to watch for the night passage up to Portland Bill and around St Albans head. The crew was on duty when we found a pot marker infested area and was kept busy dodging the images of them on the FLIR. One nearly got us - she was being good and updating the log when one sneaked closer than she wanted it. Looking up at the FLIR image it was a rapid course change and into neutral for the engine. That woke up the captain who found that we were now on a reciprocal course. Quite a dramatic about turn indeed.  Some wind picked up which in turn picked up some waves and made pot spotting trickier so it kept us very focussed for a while.

Dawn came as we were approaching the western entrance to the Solent and was equally impressive:

Another show to enjoy:

The trip timing meant that we had to push the strengthening tide through the Solent and to Portsmouth. Could not be helped, we had rocket assistance going past Portland when it was most important. 

Arriving at Portsmouth at low tide was fun. The ferries were not able to go through the Swashway as the depth was too low, so they had to travel all the way around into the main channel. The fast cats were using it but very slowly to start with and naturally the hovercraft was perfectly happy. This meant commercial traffic was approaching from all sorts of strange directions and all at the same time. We opted to go the long was round too, only to find the Commodore Clipper cargo ship departing that way for the Channel Islands. It was busy. 

Here is the route for info:

The little kink in the run across Lyme Bay was the crew avoiding a fishing boat. Or so she said. 

Arriving into Haslar some 15 hours later we backed onto a very nice berth and felt pleased that we had a secure spot where we could leave the boat for a couple of days if needed. 

Maintenance news:

The long spell moored in Dartmouth has taken its toll on the keel cooler. The engine ran around 5 degrees Centigrade warmer than usual and during our little wide open throttle run towards the end of the trip, the temperature climbed even more. Poor boat needs a lift out soon. Ironically, when we set off the engine temperature climbed to around 55 degrees C and stopped. A check with the IR gun confirmed that this was wrong and some gentle manipulation of the connection on the temperature sender soon got it back to a more normal 75C or so. Looks like some corrosion had built up on the terminals during the layup period in Dartmouth so a proper clean up will be done once the engine cools down. Important as the coolant temperature error meant that the engine was being slightly over-fuelled by the ECU - the instruments showed around 10% extra "litres per hour" compared to our normal fuel burn so the sender issue had to be corrected whilst underway. 

 

The last bits of Devon for a while

One of the "have to do things" whilst in Dartmouth is a quick trip up to Totnes. A wonderfully alternative little town with mainly local independent shops. They famously refused to let a Costa coffee outlet open in the main street a while ago. However, Coffee #1 has managed to break in. This chair in a local shop window gives you a flavour of the place:

and in case you cannot read the label:

Yup, that is Totnes. We enjoyed refreshments courtesy of  The curator - well worth a visit if you are in the area, try the brownies!

On the cake theme, we haven't had any particularly excellent carrot cakes to report on recently. Well, all that has changed. Another winner has emerged in Dartmouth itself. Bayards Cove Inn has great coffee and carrot cake to get excited about. We had to try it twice to make sure.

Continuing the cake topic, we had a surprise addition to the boats in Dart Marina when Lars and Birgit arrived on their sparkly, new to them, Azimut and were given the pole position hammerhead next to the higher ferry. Tradition has it that Birgit has been the supplier of some truly wonderful cakes but Lars sent a message whilst underway to manage our expectations - their boat was a cake free zone. As it was a wet afternoon, the crew wound up the oven and made a carrot loaf to take to them instead, it had to be our turn. Here is their very smartly presented craft via a picture stolen from Marinetraffic.com:

It was lovely to catch up a little and see them enjoying their new boat. 

The social fun continued when John and Kath arrived on their sparkly Broom 39 Prime Time. They were lucky to get a berth in Dart Marina for a while and invited us to dinner in their cockpit. Rather nice being fed for a change after hosting other folks on board our boat many times. We much enjoyed catching up with them and hearing how madly busy the Falmouth area was. Bodes badly for heading west later on....

Maintenance news:

Whilst we were in Bucklers Hard, the very nice Adrian from T and M supplies came to measure up the remaining original exhaust insulation. We wanted to replace it as the external "see through" covering was starting to fall apart and the silver finish was decomposing too. We knew how this would end (badly!) based on what happened to the stuff that was installed in the engine room.

So, we removed the new blanket from the exhaust muffler (tricky to access) and checked to see how corroded it was. Having been fitted in 2017 (see earlier blog post ) we were interested to see how much external corrosion had occurred. The good news was that it was in pretty good nick. Maybe the couple of coats of high temperature paint that we applied to it from new had helped, so it was treated to another one.  

You can see how sad the original insulation was from this picture:

with the silencer shown at the bottom. Poor Adrian had to climb inside the stack to remove the horrid wire that held the original blanket in place and then to slide the new sections in place. They are way better, using D rings and straps to secure them so that removal is possible. They also have a significantly better external coating - the 4 year old blanket that we removed from the muffler was pristine. Here is the "after" view so you can compare:

Looking up the stack from the muffler area, here is the before:

and after image:

And yes, Adrian was inside there, not much spare space for him and only a tiny ledge to stand on. The last bit of the job involved getting right to the top of the stack - climbing up and sitting on one of the wing pieces. They were not too clean on top either thanks to seagulls etc. Sorry Adrian.

Really happy with their work once again and also the sensible prices they charge. This new lagging should last for as long as we need it to......

Guess what, more Dartmouth time and a little road trip

You might think that we have taken root here and are about to register on the electoral roll. Well, not really. We needed to find somewhere we could safely leave the boat so we could travel back to Hythe to take Mrs Toddler to a hospital check. Dartmouth seemed the only option after being turned away from all the Plymouth marinas (bar Queen Anne's Battery, the one run by MDL - we didn't call them on religious grounds. Yup, we strongly object to giving vast amounts of money to MDL).

Our extended stay was far from boring though. John and Irene were still around in their motorhome and so we had a two dinghy trip up to Dittisham for lunch. J and I and Archie used our "rubber flubber" - the Avon rollup dinghy with the fire breathing 3.5HP Tohatsu outboard. Thanks to a covid restricted season last year, the little outboard had not been used for 18 months. Old fuel was still in the tank that must have a way higher % of oil than normal as the petrol tends to evaporate. Topped it up with fresh fuel mix, cleaned the storage oil off the spark plug and three pulls later it was running. Oh yes. It then behaved perfectly:

Archie the dog was not too impressed with his lifejacket in the warm weather and needed to escape it. He was also unimpressed that we all ordered a pizza with chilli flakes on it.

On the way back, a southerly breeze had picked up which was not forecast. This was blowing over the outgoing stream and so it made the river quite choppy. Those of us in the RIB were fine. Irene got a little bit wet but dried out well afterwards and didn't complain at all.  She is way tougher than we are.

We did a few more bits to help Simon and Amanda with the boat hire business. The captain had a moment of happiness when we took their Defender across to Kingswear on the ferry to collect a couple of dead outboards from Darthaven:

It felt good to be driving a Defender again - the original one, as the train spotters will be able to tell from the picture above, not the new electronics infested thing with automatic transmission and loads of driver aids. To be fair, Simon's Defender has mirrors and aircon so it isn't totally basic. 

To prove that the average IQ in the country seems to be dropping as fast as the national debt is rising, we witnessed Simon taking a great call on the business phone:

Simon - Dartmouth Boat Hire

Numpty - Hello, where in Dittisham are you based?

Simon - No, we are in Dartmouth, that is why we are called Dartmouth boat hire

Numpty - Oh, is there a rental place in Dittisham then?

Simon - Yes, Dittisham boat hire

As the phrase goes, they walk amongst us....

We then had a road trip. Yup, a road trip. Simon had very very kindly loaned us his rather nice VW T-Roc so we could get back to Hythe to take Mrs Toddler to a hospital appointment. The hospital folks do like to keep an eye on the battery in her pacemaker. Mr Toddler is keen on that too - if it started to go flat, his dinner might get later and later each day.

Never being the sort of folks to miss a chance for a good rant, here one comes. Regular readers might have picked up that the crew is a tad Fitbit addicted. Well, yet again hers was failing - this time some of the lines on the screen were dead and so the display was slowly expiring, line by line. For the cost, the durability of these things is appalling! After a most painful on line chat with them (how was yet another reboot going to fix the obvious hardware issue??)  the warranty process was to send the watch back so it could be checked and then have a replacement mailed out to us. This took nearly 4 weeks end to end. Pathetic. The new Fitbit was laying in Hythe when we arrived and so the crew was keen to get back into competitive step counting. Only when  the "so called new" watch was fired up, it did this:

Perhaps they thought that as some lines failed on the old one they would replace it with a device that had a large bright bar across the bottom of the display that was always visible. Yet another discussion with Fitbit support, yet another device coming. Their equipment really is not worth the sticker price.

Blog tool update:

The nice Google folks have decided to remove the "widget" that allowed you to become a follower of the blog and to get automated emails containing the details of every new post. So, we have started emailing a link to the exiting blog followers each time we add a new post. If anyone wants to be added to this list, let us know via the contact form on here - you can see it above the list of older posts and other menu options. Equally, if you want to be removed from the emails as you are totally bored with our ramblings, please do the same.