Storms, Hythe, old times (well, not that old) and preparing for an operation

Sometimes, you get to be almost famous for 5 minutes. Well, this is the best we can offer. Have a look at Nordhavn Europe website link  We need to discuss the copyright on our images though. 

A planned cat sitting trip to Hampshire was cancelled when Ann and Martin, the owners of said cat, were pretty much forced to move house rather than go off on vacation. The joys of the English approach to house sales with a chain of buyers involved. Instead we headed to Hythe and stayed in Toddlerville for a few nights. We had the delight of a trip to the local waste recycling site (better known as "the tip / dump" to we older folks) where we were treated to rudeness by the rather grumpy staff. If anyone can explain why a waste recycling centre doesn't take glass bottles and jars, that would be of interest.

More fun was a trip to the Nordhavn Europe offices in Swanwick marina and lunch with the team there. It kind of made up for the lack of royalties on our pictures. We also visited the Golden Arrow folks in Southampton to collect a couple of the wildly expensive ZF gearbox filters. The credit card shivered gently. Luckily one was to replace a filter we had given to Martin (Mr Malaspina) and the other was a spare for him. I calmed the credit card down with that news.

The captain visited the farm run by the supermarket chain Waitrose. Not for produce but to meet a couple of reprobates that he used to work with. Lovely location, nice cafe / restaurant and shop too: 

We did the "old retired characters" thing, were amused at some of the stuff that Chris had in store (eg old Rover Financial Services calculators - he had never worked for them and claimed to be storing them for Mr Bishop) and much enjoyed catching up. The captain is now convinced that in comparison, he is not a hoarder. Chris admitted to having every bank statement filed away bar the first two, since he opened an account at the age of 15. It would not be nice to mention his age here but that lot must take up several ring binders.

We haven't mentioned the goddog for a while - well, the poor girl needed an operation to remove a (fortunately) benign lump from her head. We met Anne and conehead as she is now known for lunch and admired Izzy's new look. We brought a lamb bone and watching her manage to chew it and remove the marrow whilst in the cone of shame was most impressive (and very entertaining too). She did look quite forlorn:

We are pleased to report that conehead has now been removed though and all is well.

Being social continued with refreshments and cake at a neighbours in Hythe and a dinner out in Barry with Simon (the man renovating his "Norvette" - a Corvette 32) and Nikki before returning to batten down the hatches. Yes, yet another storm was on the way.

Here is how the Windy website saw the incoming wind pattern:

and yes the more red it gets the worse it is. The different thing about this storm is that nearly all of the UK was getting clobbered.  The resulting wave heights were pretty evil:

and in case you are wondering, the white bits to the west of Ireland are even bumpier than the red bit! It was forecast to peak with over 10 metre waves. We just made sure our mooring lines were OK, the RIB cover was secured and stayed inside. Friends in Northern Ireland reported it as pretty horrid. One sent us this AIS track of the route the Stena ferry followed at night when approaching Belfast: 

Yes, it was too windy for them to attempt entering the narrow channel up to Belfast and to dock so they did several circles just north of Bangor waiting for things to calm down. The passengers must have been so happy / violently ill.Guess what, two days after that storm, the next one came through just to amuse us..... We are getting more and more bored with this weather pattern.

Maintenance news:

Since the captain is going to be slightly incapacitated from the end of January when he gets shoulder surgery, we tried to complete most of the must do maintenance tasks before the boating season starts. Hence the genset and wing had fuel filter changes, a gearbox oil change for the wing, the genset was due for and treated to an oil and filter swap and the main had fuel filters swapped too. Quite a pile of old filters to dispose of. A new filter for the Seagull water purifying thing will be needed soon and we must admit to having almost ignored the RIB outboard - no winter oil change took place. The one saving grace is that it did very few hours last year so the oil will not be too contaminated yet. That will have to wait until the Captain has a properly functioning shoulder once more.