Getting ready to head off -at last

We slowly sort of got ourselves ready to head off, hoping that the weather might just improve a little. Martin and Inge had arrived and were very busy cleaning their already rather sparkly Nordhavn, Malaspina. They even enjoyed a short voyage to turn her around so they could shine up the port side:

We joined in the hull polishing fun, although we completed our port side from the RIB to save the crew bending down and kneeling on the pontoon. Slower but less bodily pain it seems. We were delighted to finish it though and treated ourselves to a right royal day out - we went to Porthcawl for a wander around. The tiny harbour never looks inviting:

and the tiny entrance and pile of mud at low water don't add to the appeal of the place one jot:

A shame really as the town and waterfront area are pretty good, we had a nice time wandering around the town, admiring a rare thing (some sun peeped out) and the ingenious use of driftwood on the promenade:

It was then time to get serious about departing. We returned to Hythe, dropped off the car, set up a new TV for the toddlers (the old one had started to give things a nice green colour, making watching snooker on TV quite a challenge really) and braved the train back. They still run totally unsuitable old rolling stock that was designed for short Thames Valley commuter routes on the Portsmouth Harbour to Cardiff service.  Numb bum, ringing ears from the engine noise (windows have to be open as the aircon is feeble) and a horrid resonance in our carriage at speed added to the uncomfortable tiny seats to make the whole experience wonderful. At least this one was on time for a change. This service even stars in the "worst train allocations of the UK" video. That didn't cheer us up much to be honest. 

After a day on board to recover from the horrors of Great Western trains, we dug out the little Brompton bikes, fitted new chains and headed off for what was quite a liberating ride in the sun. Liberating because it was the first one since the end of January and shoulder surgery.  It then became lubricating as we needed a stop off outside a pub for essential refreshment and sustenance:

Only the refreshment had arrived at the time of the photo.

As the boat had also not been moved since the end of January, we took her for a run around the bay area to see if all the oily bits were working OK and then make sure that the electronics behaved too. Luckily all was well, except the stern gland on the main engine could do with a little more water coming through it. The route was the usual confused up and down the bay thing:

trying to keep it in the deeper bits, especially for the wide open throttle runs. It seemed that we were nearly ready to head off, so we had a look at the weather forecasts to see if they would conspire to prevent this.....

Maintenance news:

As part of the pre-departure preparation, we gave the boat a much needed wash off, scrubbed the winter freshwater growth off the hull around and under the waterline and packed away all the things that had migrated out of lockers and cupboards during the long winter period.. It is amazing how things seem to pop out and not get put away again.

The main engine stern gland was slackened off a bit to promote more water flow through it and will almost certainly need adjustment after the first longer sea trip. We refitted the new wiper blades that had been taken off for the winter to save them a little bit, sealed off the heater outlet (SO nice not to need that) and did some route prep work too. Who knows, we might actually use the boat as a boat soon. 

Tinkering around and waiting for many things

Thanks to the half crown that the dentist was unhappy with, we had another trip to Hythe, this time a real whistlestop thing. Fortunately the replacement from the lab was a better fit to the other teeth and the nice dentist lady was happy with it. Our guess is that she had to be - it was costing them quite a lot and the cynic in us says that it was going to be fitted no matter what. An unfair comment probably, she seemed very intent on doing a good job.

The return run to Penarth was a little bit different and it ended up as a real pain - the M4 near Bristol was closed thanks to a truck fire so we had a monster diversion up country to avoid the carnage in that area. We had already made one diversion, heading to Fareham first to visit the vinyl supplier that the local trim shop uses. Getting the right thickness material with as little grain as possible for our pilothouse headlining was proving tricky so we went to look at the actual rolls of material and picked the one we wanted. We then brought it back with us to help speed up the job.

When we arrived back, the rather annoying trip was forgotten as we enjoyed this view of Malaspina astern of us:

Just a perfect evening albeit a tad chilly....  We then amused ourselves with bits of hull polishing, a run up through the Brecon Beacons in the drizzle (ended up driving through the clouds) and a rather good Sunday lunch with Simon and Nikki as a "farewell" thing in case we didn't get to see them again before we depart Penarth. 

Meanwhile, Martin and Inge, the owners of Malaspina had arrived from Canada, gone to the Netherlands and returned to Penarth. All rather hard to keep up with really. We much enjoyed catching up with them and admired their diligence in cleaning and polishing their already very shiny Nordhavn:

The picture gives you a good idea of just how high the bow is on a Nordhavn 47. Martin is no pygmy. 

Locally, the excitement was that the resident swans had a third go at making a nest and this time seemed serious about hatching whatever eggs she has produced - earlier on this spring they abandoned one egg in their first nest:

Maintenance news:

We pressed on with the hull polishing fun and made reasonable progress between rain showers and freezing cold winds. Wayne, the lovely trimmer guy, returned the headlining panels for the pilothouse when he'd covered them using the material we brought back from our Hythe trip and refitted them. A way nicer look that the bare insulation and dangling wires we'd been enjoying:

A fiddly little job was replacing the battery in the crew's Sena wireless headset. We use them for communication when berthing and the battery life had become pretty poor. We'd learned from the Sena folks that a normal USB phone charger was pushing in way too many amps for the little lithium battery and that had shortened the life of it. Naturally, in the manual they don't say "charge at 1 amp or less", just in a supplementary document they will email you when you talk to them. Thanks to Andrew (the owner of Zephyros the N43) we ordered the right battery, dismantled the headset and removed the old battery which has this tiny connector on it:

That has to be cut off and soldered onto the new battery:

then refitted into the earpiece under the loudspeaker you can see off to one side:

Hopefully the crew's headset will have a way better "talk time" now.

The final must do job before we depart Penarth was replacing the engine start batteries. We mentioned beforehand that they were the originals and had finally given up. Not bad for 17 years in service really. We looked at replacing them with lifeline AGM on a like for like basis but the price of those premium batteries (and availability) was wild - over £1000 each plus delivery. We had decided to replace the wing / genset start batteries at the same time as they are the same vintage and were showing signs of age (lower resting voltage than expected) but were still working fine. Buying 4 batteries to make up the two 24v start banks with Lifeline branding on them would be rather an eye-watering bill. We will certainly go for lifeline again when the domestic bank needs renewal but for lightly stressed and very lightly cycled start batteries, we opted to go cheaper.The marine engineering guys in Penarth said that they'd had good experience and service from Monbat units so we opted for those.

The dinghy crane made light work of removing the old heavy lifelines into a marina trolley:

and then lifting the new replacements into the lazarette:

Standardisation is a wonderful thing. The answer to "when is a 4D AGM battery not a 4D AGM battery" is an interesting one. We'd had fun finding the right case size to fit into our specially made battery trays but nothing prepared us for this amusement. Here are the originals:

and the new ones:

Yes, the terminals were reversed, meaning that the battery cabling had to be re-routed / gently persuaded to swap sides. They are VERY thick and heavy cables so it was far from easy. Luckily, as the captain is still begin ultra careful with his shoulder following the surgery,  Jim the engineer guy was doing the grunt work and had that fun. Accessing the main engine batteries in their cupboard in the lazarette was a pig of a job. The wing / genset batteries are behind the wing engine in the engine room itself and way more accessible. Not a fun job but one that had to be done.