A little doglet and visitor time

Since we were planning a trip to North Norfolk and all those tempting beaches, we inherited a little dog who wanted to join us. That meant a trip to Barrybados with Simon and Nikki where the best dog-gobstopper of all had to be administered to quell the excited barking:

She just adores the beach. We put up with it for her sake of course.

The social activities continued when we hosted some folks who had driven all the way from Portavadie in Scotland down to Penarth. Google will show you just where the place is but not how stunning the views from Niall and Sheila's lounge are as you look down the Loch towards the Isle of Arran. Niall settled into the "life afloat" thing pretty quickly and Izzy settled into the "he has breakfast and I might get some of it" look:

Sheila had her own lapwarmer (they brought Penny, their little Cavapoo with them)  and when they were both eating Izzy struggled with the difficult question of "who should I  stare at and will into feeding me":

The two dogs were very well behaved together luckily, double ball trouble during a LONG walk around the bay, into the city and parks then back:

It was great catching up with our Portavadie friends, albeit briefly this time. We are threatening a longer stay with them "up north" in the New Year, Covid restrictions permitting.....

Maintenance news:

Well, the heating system continues to run OK as long as the captain pops out to the lazarette and manually turns the boiler on / off as required. There hasn't been time to dismember the control box and look at the relays etc in there to see if any have failed. To get to the box there is rather a lot of stuff to move out and on a wet day, leaving that in the cockpit is not ideal.

A new manual pump was fitted into the black water tank outlet system despite the captain's original plan to just by-pass it with some stainless tube. Why - because the pump was not that expensive:

Then another "opportunity" appeared. The float switch in the grey water tank that triggers an "automatic" operation of the discharge pump stopped working. Experience suggests that it has not failed (they are amazingly reliable bits of kit):

You can see the holes in the bottom that allow water in and out of the float tube. Well, we reckon that these are gummed up - we had exactly that issue with the same switch that controls the main bilge pump. That one was simple to fix. Remove the switch from the bilge area (lots of bending over and reaching down but all do-able), clean it out and refit. Getting the switch out of the grey water tank is mission impossible as the access hatch which holds the floats for the level indicator is way smaller then the captain's fat hand. Even if you could reach inside it is totally unclear about how you could release the float switch it or refit it afterwards. We would have to remove the larger metal panel that is "gooped" down and bolted to the top of the tank. Messy and tricky job that we hope to avoid. 

So, we are relying on some "Bio-Blast" grease and fat remover stuff to clean it up. We give the grey water tank a clean out every 6 months or so with similar products but it looks like we didn't disturb the gunge in the float switch sufficiently. More Bio-Blast is on order:

Off in the mud then back to heating system fun

Ages ago, pre-Covid if you can remember that far back, we had booked an off road driving day with Land rover. Well, it finally happened.

We drove to Honiton via a brief stop in Bridgwater for lunch which was a strange place. One side of the river had lovely buildings and a few nice shops. The other was sadder than a sad thing and well behind the times. How far behind? Well, this car dealership sign just about summed it up:

Reliant cars stopped production around 2002!

Our off road day in the forest area around Honiton was excellent. Anne (Izzy the dog's owner) joined us and unlike before, the instructor could not travel in the car with us thanks to Covid so he was ahead in his own vehicle and linked by radio. Some of the specially constructed obstacles were fun. Here is the inclinometer built into the Defender showing a 27 degree tilt to the side:

and here is how it felt to the crew in the back seat:

Somehow it felt more than 27 degrees. Fun was also had on the "bumps" that allowed us to see just how the car would still progress with two wheels around a meter and a half off the ground. To help you appreciate what was happening they had rigged up a mirror and getting the car onto the balance point allowed the instructor to have some fun with the crew who was driving:

We were astonished with the capability of the Defender especially as it was on normal road tyres. We could drive up a forest track that was too steep for the instructor's discovery to conquer with ease thanks to the car and the electronics controlling wheelspin and grip. The same stuff got us down slowly and safely too. An amazing car and a great day.

After the mechanised fun, the crew needed another animal fix so it was off to the local donkey sanctuary - kind of a re-run of the visit to the Isle of Wight version. Some grown-ups just seem to struggle with the whole growing up concept:

A wander around West Bay and Beaminster concluded a most enjoyable weekend. No boating at all but.... 

Back in our "reality" afloat, we needed to give the rather neglected boat a run out so we did the usual trips up and down the Cardiff bay area, making our track look as boring as it is in reality:

However, the weather was kind:

gentle winds and no rain. Upon return to Penarth we headed for the fuel berth to splash some in to keep the generator and heating going over the winter. 1,400 litres later we berthed again, happy in the lucky timing because there was a new tanker delivery due the following day and of course the price would be going up.

Maintenance news:

All to do with the heating system again. From the last post you can figure out that the system had been misbehaving. A chat to Toby the expert guy from Keto who are based in the Hamble river gave us a hint that it could be the motor valve in the system playing up. This valve apparently defaults to the "air con" position when de-energised, circulating the coolant around the system and through the air con compressor:

Manually swapping the valve position seemed to enable the 24v "on" feed to the boiler and it duly fired up. Then the system ran perfectly all evening. Happy days. Well, not quite. Happy day maybe. The captain woke up early(ish) the following morning and suddenly heard the boiler firing up. The system was totally turned off but the boiler had a mind of its own. So, at stupid o'clock, the lazarette was unlocked and the captain used the physical switch on the boiler to turn it off.. Why did this happen? No clue at all. More investigation needed.

Dental fun, Aussie invasion and more fixing things

You can only have so much fun in one month. Ours was centred around the dentist telling us that we didn't need any fillings (or worse) and then a visit from Hazel and Tom. Seeing a 30 year old that you have known from birth does make you feel rather old. Yes, in case you hadn't spotted it, we probably are rather old now.

It was great catching up with Hazel and meeting Tom who are over from Australia and working in London. They took the coach to Cardiff on November 5th. We foolishly went to collect them from the coach stop not realising that Sophia Gardens is a mecca for folks who want to watch the fireworks display in the park. It was manic. Still, we managed to meet up and escape from the wildly busy gardens afterwards. The touristy bits followed - Castell Coch, a walk into and around Cardiff and a traditional Welshcake purchase. Lunch was more Germanic thanks to the start of the Xmas market and the "Bavarian sausage" offerings:

To be fair, the sausage was OK in comparison to some that the Captain had consumed during his many stays in Munich.

As Poppy the little fluffy white dog hates fireworks and her owner was going to be away one evening, we hosted her and Pip on board. Poppy was fed a special tranquiliser tablet whilst Pip just enjoyed cuddles:

The trickiest part was opening a bottle of Prosecco - to ensure the "pop" of the cork did not upset Poppy. Tom our visitor played music from his phone quite loudly next to her ear. It seemed to work well, as did the Prosecco.

The tranquilisers certainly worked:

Maintenance news:

The pesky leaky fitting that couples the outlet from the manual bilge pump to the backup electric pump has been replaced with a  lovely piece of stainless steel that Chris the nice guy from Food Quality Engineering fabricated for us. The before and after pictures show just how much of a better job this is. Here is the rubbish plastic screwed together version (with blue gunge fingerprints on it after an attempt to seal the leaks):

and the stainless replacement:

The old plastic fitting has been given a decent burial in a recycling skip. One step forward and all that. The step backwards was when the heating system seemed to be allowing the boat to chill off too much one evening. Upon checking we found that the boiler was not firing up and there were no error messages being flashed from it. Oh good. A little checking of the wiring showed that there was no "on" 24v signal going to the boiler from the Webasto Blue Cool system. Something that had worked perfectly well for many hours. Giving it a 24v input the boiler duly fired up but closed down after a short time with an overheating message. Strange as the circulating pump in the system was working. More investigation needed but as we were leaving for Devon the following morning, it got parked. Grr.

A couple of little excursions and maintenance frustrations

Settling back into Penarth life seemed pretty easy really. The bikes were pressed into action again and several trips (on the unexpectedly dry days) around the area followed. One of the favourite spots is through the city and out to Pontcanna. Nice trip, 95% on cycle tracks too. Oh, it also finishes up at a nice Coffee #1 place too:

Must have been cycling into the wind heading there as the coffee seems to be intact but the pastry has taken a pasting..... The area really is good for cycle paths and routes along the rivers. Ideal, at least on nicer weather days.

A little escape followed, three nights in the rather lovely Aberllynfi B and B  (see https://www.aberllynfi.house/ )  which we have stayed in before. A very Covid secure operation too. Whilst there, we wandered around Hay-on-Wye and found this in a window:

Seemed like such a quiet place to have a "BLM" debate going on. Further excursions to Ludlow and then Hereford with the lovely buildings followed:

A good break in a beautiful part of the country. Back in Penarth, we resumed the bike exercise knowing that a few days of truly grim weather were forecast. The new Pret a Manger next to Cardiff central station was a handy stopping off spot although this time the crew was not keen on having her likeness taken:

We were truly horrified at the number of people spilling out from the station and heading into the city. Seeing bouncers on the doors of pubs (including Wetherspoons) at 11am was not edifying or, perhaps, contributing to an improvement in the local Covid infection rate.

As the dentist was beckoning and we needed to be around the Hythe area for that, we took advantage of the trip back to Hampshire and spent some time on the Isle of Wight, invading Tina's life for a weekend. Owing to a horrid miscalculation (we have no kids and so half term dates are not often in our minds) the ferry over was manically busy:

Having somehow survived the madness known as a Red Funnel ferry, things got way better. The crew was in a happy place:

visiting the Isle of Wight donkey sanctuary with 118 different donkeys to admire / pet / mark off on the sheet she is clutching. Somehow she resisted the "donkey twitcher" approach and we left before seeing all of them. Quite fortunate really or we might still be there hunting for the slightly shy inmates.

Walks around the coast at Bonchurch, an excellent lunch at the Albert Cottage in East Cowes and generally catching up kept us very happy indeed.

Maintenance News:

Sometime ago, when using the electric pump to empty the black water tank, we noticed a little weep from the manual pump that is in the same outlet line as a backup in case the electric one fails. Only this time, it was the manual one that was giving trouble. 

An overhaul kit was procured and then we had the fun of dismantling the pump, trying to ignore the odours and interesting sludge that accumulates inside it. The rebuild was totally unsuccessful as the case seemed to have been butchered before with one of the screws that holds the casing together having been re-drilled for an unknown / unfathomable reason. The gloop that someone had used to seal it was no longer working and the damage to the case meant there were three options. Either bodge it again, replace the entire pump or just bypass it and rely on the electric one or shore pump out stations. The third option won and the captain measured up for a nice stainless steel piece of tube to bridge the hoses. That way an new manual pump could always be refitted if needed pretty quickly (if messily).

Here is the offending article:

Many bad words might have been used about it and the bodger who messed up the casing during the first couple of years of the boat's life.....