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......