Tiny Tina, Bristol 5 star luxury and pre-season maintenance

It seemed like an age since we had met or hosted Tina. Her hectic social life and the crew's back issues had collided to prevent a catch up. Amazingly, despite rotten weather and all sorts of train trouble (on a non-strike day too), Tina made it to us. 

We amused ourselves with food, wine, gin and lots of chatting. A walk at Barrybados between rain showers was good as was a visit to Cowbridge to see Lorna's new flat and enjoy cuddles with Pip and Poppy:

Yes, Tina looked very ready to dognap him. 

Wandering around Penarth we did wonder about how many folks were involved in producing this sign. Someone ordered it, someone printed it, someone installed it. We wonder if they had the "what is an APNR camera" thought:

Or perhaps they were all dyslexic?  For the non UK readers, ANPR refers to an automatic number plate recognition camera. No idea how they scrambled the letters.

We revisited the rather excellent Bush Inn at St Hilary which we've complimented before on their lamb burgers. We are delighted to report that they are still excellent, only now served with toasted halloumi in them too. You need to try them out.

As a kind of "pre departure for the summer cruise thing" we booked a couple of nights in the rather nice looking Berwick Lodge hotel, near Bristol, and took the Toddlers along too. Despite more cruddy weather (kind of a theme building here) we rather enjoyed the amazingly decorated bedrooms, building and the excellent food and friendly staff too. Have a peek at Berwick Lodge website  and before you comment, no we did not pay the rack rate for the rooms. There was, as you would expect from us, a deal on offer...... The rooms were rather special:

and the huge bathroom was as grand. A return visit is called for.

Maintenance News:

Well, as there is a rumour that spring is coming (hard to believe at the moment), so we felt that all the pre-season maintenance had to get some attention. Fuel filters were swapped out, main engine gearbox oil and filter, the genset had a 6 monthly oil and filter change as did the main engine. The genset was treated to a new water pump impeller and the main engine an air filter. The captain then treated himself to a much needed gin. 

Less amusing was swapping out the comms battery. The boat is basically a 24v setup but for devices that are addicted to 12v (like the radios), we have a seperate battery with its own charger that runs this stuff. The battery was the original (ie 2006 manufacture) and was getting to the stage where it struggled to accept charge properly - AGMs are normally good at that so it had to go. The only drawback was that the battery weighs 30Kg and is under the floor in the main cabin:

Lugging that out was even harder as the old battery didn't have any built in handles. At least the new one did and here it is fastened down in its new home:

Having handles almost justified the eye-watering price of Lifeline AGMs. Only almost. 

One of the least favourite jobs is adjusting the valve clearances on the genset as it involves lots of leaning over the frame of the sound enclosure. It needed to be done though and so the genset had its lid removed and the clearances all checked. Three of the eight valves had tightened up a bit and so needed adjusting. The cover was treated to a new seal and then rebuilt. 

A few other little tidy up jobs and the boat felt kind of ready for adventures. The weather had other ideas as the really wet and windy stuff continued.