Old Haunts revisited

Sad as it is, we needed to give the little dog back to her owner Anne. The weather had not been kind and her new raincoat had been put to good use, protecting the rather nice grooming job that she had "dogfully" suffered a few days beforehand:

So, a road trip to Hampshire and lunch with her mum allowed the handback to go smoothly. We then dropped the little Brompton bikes off with Brilliant Bikes in Chobham for a service, new puncture resistant tyres and a freebie upgrade to the mudguard stays. A much needed alteration. The folks there are just great and really know Bromptons. Also their (Surrey based) service prices are about a third of the amount that the Pure Electric folks in Cardiff want to charge, despite the fact that the Cardiff team know very little about the product. Or perhaps because they know very little? 

We amused ourselves with a memory lane kind of trip to Windsor and a wander along the river Thames where a flotilla of the Queen's swans headed towards us on the scrounge for food:

This was our old cruising ground, when we had boats based at Bray Marina just upstream from here. It felt strange to be in the area as a visitor somehow but most enjoyable.

The wildlife was as we remembered too with a few of the distinctive Egyptian geese around looking most regal:

We pottered across the bridge to Eton and watched the monied / privileged elite in their school outfits walking around with the air of future cabinet ministers, or MPs at a minimum. Heading back we actually saw a little motor cruiser underway, pushing quite a strong stream as it headed for the bridge:

Plenty of people on board, no lifejackets anywhere, the river is clearly a safe place even with strong streams running near the weir.

The final sociable thing was meeting Mark and Julia (again, you've seen them in here before) and their new puppy Mabel. She is achingly cute and very well behaved too, totally unlike Julia:

Our return to Penarth, after collecting the bikes, was via Hythe to pick up the flybridge cushions and covers which had been stored there for the winter. They are just too big to keep on board happily, they either trash the forecabin or the engine room all winter, neither of which is ideal.

It was time to top up with diesel ready for, we hope, a good cruising season ahead. Only we mis-timed it. Having been away enjoying ourselves in posh places like Windsor, we returned to find that diesel prices had rocketed up. Thank you so much Mr Putin. No matter, the stuff was needed. We don't plan to make the normal trip over to Guernsey for fuel this year, instead we want to head north as soon as possible so a top up at UK prices but before the tax on red diesel goes up (April 1st) made some sort of sense. At least it did to us if not our bank balance. 

As we keep reminding ourselves, fuel costs are not high for a slow old boat. We cannot imagine cruising around in a fast 1 MPG planing powerboat now. Well, we cannot imagine paying for the fuel. Post April 1st our old Broom 415 boat would cost around £6.80 per nautical mile - more as fuel prices continue to creep up. The Nordhavn costs more like £2.30  per mile if we buy the full price fully taxed  UK stuff  but £1.10 by filling in Guernsey. Remember that full fuel tanks will last us all year, cruising in the summer and heating / genset in the winter. We hold a lot of the stuff.

Keeping the puppy theme going, we met up with Simon and Nikki who also have a fresh out of the box pup. Moxie is a mega-cute fox red labrador who is still being carried around everywhere until her jabs are all sorted out:

She looks very content in her carry bag and was also well behaved when we hit Cadwalladers for one of their excellent bacon sandwiches. Her nose did twitch a little though.

Maintenance news:

Sometimes the "do it annually or after x hours" instructions seem a bit like overkill. This time, they were not. The genset had a new impeller fitted and we found that the old one had one blade that was breaking up:

It had been fitted 187 hours and 366 days ago. This time the captain didn't bother to take off the boot from the heat exchanger tube and fish out the missing bit. The heat exchanger had a big clean out last year so the one piece of neoprene can stay in there for a while. 

New duck bill valves were fitted to the anti-siphon loops for the genset and main engine too. A relatively cheap item that could flood an engine if it fails. For anyone who is unfamiliar with the vented loops, this link will provide you with more information on them than you ever wanted to know Forespar vented loop information .

The vented loops for the grey and black water tank pump-outs were also given the once over and the little grille over the condenser of the fridge/freezer given the regular clean out. It is truly amazing just how much fluff finds its way in there when the fans are running. Leaving it to build up makes a huge difference to the compressor run time as well.