Gosport - the last episode (we hope) and a flyboy discourse

Still working on the basis of "escape from Gosport at every possible moment as it is Gosport", the eBikes have been relatively heavily used. On one occasion when Anne and Izzy were around, Izzy tried out the larger Brompton bag and had a little trip along the pontoon. She was quite nonplussed to start with as her owner zipped her into the bag but was quite chilled about the trip:

She did provoke several comments and glances from other folks in the marina, usually positive.

We had many trips to and from the hospital for Mr Toddler and carelessly we seemed to have left him in there once. That meant the poor guy missed out on the captain's birthday lunch in a nice New Forest pub. The crew and Mrs Toddler would like to point out that the glasses do not contain any alcohol:

Things got even worse for Mr T when the crew stole HIS chair in our Hythe marina house:

We are not sure if worrying about who was in his spot (most Sheldon-like) had any bearing on his rapid recovery and escape from the hospital. Back in Gosport, the marina carpark had a new attendant it seemed:

This young fox was not at all concerned about cars arriving or people wandering around. Having seen a few of the scarier Gosport human inhabitants, we think that the fox needs to be more careful or it could end up being cooked. 

By now, regular readers of this stuff will have met or heard of Martin (Malaspina, another Nordhavn 47) who is a training captain for Cathay Pacific. He flies what he reckons is a very pretty aircraft, the Airbus A350 and was rather proud of this picture taken recently at Hong Kong:

We are a little worried about what he was up to with his hands but will let that pass by. Now, Captain Rae (Albatross - Nordhavn 47) the ex Lightning fighter pilot, ex BA 747 and 787 captain calls anything that Airbus makes a "poxy frogbus" and offered this image from his 787 days as a comparison:

Feel free to let us know which plane (or pilot) you prefer in the comments section to help settle the "Poxy Frogbus versus Boeing" battle going on between them. We are still sitting on the fence on this one as we don't wish to upset either of the friends. You might have a little more freedom to express your views.

Since we were not sure what we would be doing, we had sadly refused the offer of two weeks Izzy sitting whilst Anne and family went away on holiday. Instead, Tina stepped into the breach and the little furry doglet had an Isle of Wight vacation. Tina kindly brought her over to see us:

but apparently this photo of the carer and the dog is unacceptable. Something about "always getting horrid pictures of me" was mentioned so the image is being shared with some personal risk involved.

Maintenance news:

Since Mr Toddler has had his maintenance, it is time for us to be nice to the neglected boat. The genset had an oil change and a few other tedious little jobs got completed, like lubricating the engine room fans, greasing the crane and giving the grey water tank a clean (another winner of a job). The new heating boiler was treated to a new silencer that got titanium wrap put on it to help reduce the heat transfer into the lazarette too.

The void through which the heater exhaust runs also had a treat - that area gets pretty warm and only had one little vent to allow the rather warm air to escape. So, a much larger vent hole and stainless cover were added to the inside of the transom. We were pretty amazed to find that the GRP lamination was an inch thick (or around 2.5cm for continental readers):

 

Built like a battleship indeed. The boat that is, not the captain's grubby thumb. You can see the insulated exhaust pipe tucked inside there together with the metal bracket under the plate that holds an electric downrigger for fishing.

Having the exhaust in the smallish void right next to the gas cylinders is not great but we struggled to see a safe / accessible place to move it to onto the transom, So it has to stay where it is with the outlet far too low on the port quarter. In rough weather the outlet needs to be blocked up to stop water getting into the exhaust, around the little swan neck and into the heater.  Again, not a great installation when the boat was new by the Hamble Webasto dealer.

And then there was even more Gosport (sorry, can't make that sound exciting) and some heater work

We had a very nice interlude looking after the fluffy barky thing again for a while. We took her to Mr Toddler's 88th birthday celebration and whilst we were drinking something nice and fizzy, the furry barky thing showed how unimpressed she was with her water bowl:

Attacking her new toy improved things for her though:

Around various hospital trips for Mr Toddler, we did a few bits of odd maintenance on the boat, used the bikes for a jailbreak from Gosport and met Captain Rae who is also in Haslar on board his Nordhavn 47, Albatross. In case you have forgotten, Colin is the recently retired ex BA 787 / 747 captain who flew Lightning (frightening) fighters in a former life with the RAF. How Mach 2 became 7 knots is a mystery. Anyway, these images demonstrate the kind of fun that he used to have:

Yes, he actually got paid to make all that noise and burn up all that kerosene. 

Maintenance news:

The old Webasto boiler that was "getting on" in years - like the captain and crew really. We had talked about replacing it as it is very mission critical during the winter. Oh, during Scottish summertime too. We had purchased a new nice Webasto Thermo Top Pro 120 after getting lots of advice from folks who repair the units as to which was better - Eberspaecher or Webasto. The nicer option of a Kabola heater was not possible - not enough space in the lazarette to fit one and it was unclear as to how the existing Webasto aircon system would behave if it had to run pressurised as needed by the Kabola boiler.

So, we enlisted the help of Biscuit again for the swap over. The original unit came out easily enough and just treated us to a bit of spilt diesel and coolant:

We found a couple of horrors with the installation too - a wire had been "draped" rather than run properly behind the unit and so it was getting nicely melted by the heat from the casing. You could not see it but one day it would have shorted and the fuse would have popped. Secondly, one of the elbows used in the coolant system plumbing had been "sawn off" by the original installer and the hose attached to it was very fortunate not to leak or come off. The little hose clip had done well to grip on the tiny bit of the elbow left.... Cowboy installation by some so called experts based on the Hamble...

The new boiler looked rather high tech in comparison and since it had no coolant or diesel to leak out of it, was allowed to lay on the saloon floor before fitting:

Luckily the new boiler fitted nicely on the old bracket and the bolt holes were identical. Thank you Mr Webasto for that. The plumbing changes were not tricky at all but two isolation valves were added into the cooling system to make removal easier in future when it needs service work. The wiring was a whole other game though. The info supplied by Webasto was not that helpful as we wanted to be able to fire up the boiler using the controls of the main aircon system, like we did with the old one. Getting clarity on how that could work took ages, phone calls to the supplier and lots of head scratching.  All to decide how to plug in a simple 24v DC feed from the aircon controller.

We also needed to feed power to one terminal connection on the new boiler to tell it to turn off at a lower temperature of around 55 to 60 degrees C when running, not the standard 80 C or so.

Amazingly, the new boiler fired up on the second attempt, Now we have to move the exhaust position (more on that in a later post) and check it is all working OK. However, some progress towards a better winter heating solution.  

with some nice neat wiring this time too:

Keeping busy in Gosport

We might have mentioned before how escaping from Gosport is one of the joys of being here. So, on a nice dry morning the little Bromptons had a trip to Fareham where we treated ourselves to a coffee. Going there you feel that you deserve it as it is gently uphill and was into the wind as well. We only use the eBike motor on the lowest setting for minimum assistance, honest! Well, apart from climbing the evil hills in Dartmouth that is. They attracted lots of attention parked up outside the coffee shop but we managed to stop the locals from stealing them:

For some strange reason, the gentle slope downhill on the way back was not noticeable as the wind had done a 180 degree turn and we were pushing into it again. Lots of effort just to get back to Gosport seemed so unfair.

Poor Izzy the god-dog needed a break as Anne was boarding another puppy. This time a labrador that was very lovely but wanted to keep licking Izzy's face. She was less than amused about this and was happy to escape with us:

However it might be her last visit as she disgraced herself on a walk. She ran across a field and started rolling in the grass, no yelling stopped her until we reached the scene and discovered that she was rolling on top of a dead rat. Rancid little dog. So, upon return she was treated to a good shower then "shrink wrapped" in her towelling robe thing to dry. Yes, there is a dog in there somewhere:

Maintenance news:

We mentioned before that we did a few bits and bobs to help out Martin and Inge - the owners of the sparkly Nordhavn 47 Malaspina. They had been suffering from electrical panel gauge failures, no surprise there really. In a moment of madness, we brought one of the sickly gauges back to our boat and tried the standard repair method that worked for two of ours but failed on two as well. 

For any Nordhavn owning folks or other lucky souls with Chi Tai meters who have not played this game it goes something like:

Pop the innards out of the casing and admire the big capacitor towards the front of the circuit board:

The one that has 105c written on it. Testing this capacitor it was clear that it had failed and gone open circuit:

So, the dead cap was unsoldered (tricky), removed and replaced with a new one which was soldered into place:

We took the meter back to Malaspina, plugged it in and found that it was still sick - we were too late to save it this time. Sorry Martin and Inge, we did try to be helpful. We were more successful in adding some more Stanadyne fuel additive to their storage tanks to help freshen up the fuel in there,  which thanks to Covid is getting on a bit. Not as old as us but "old" in diesel terms.

Having been half successful on someone else's boat, we moved on to tinkering with ours. The wiring connections to the grey and black water tanks are a bit "interesting". Bullet connectors that often pull off the weedy wires from the float switches:

As there is no wiring colour scheme, you have to remember / note down which wire goes to which connector each time too. Getting fed up with this game (we remove the tank sender to get access to the tank for cleaning purposes) the original wiring was replaced with a nice multiplug arrangement:

No more issues with unplugging and reconnecting. The black water tank will get the same treatment when the captain's knees and back have recovered.