About us and the boat

About us and the boat:

We were lucky enough to retire early at the start of 2013 so we could head off and "live the dream" on board our Nordhavn 47 Trawler Yacht. The idea is to see some of the planet, at a slow 6 - 7 knots pace. There are no fixed goals or timings, we just had a plan to visit Scotland and then probably the Baltic before heading south.

The idea is to visit the nicer areas in these latitudes before heading south for warmer weather. If we like somewhere, we will stay for a while. If not, we will just move on. So, for the people who love forward planning and targets, this might seem a little relaxed!

If anyone else is contemplating a trawler yacht life, maybe our experiences will be enough to make you think again, or maybe do it sooner then you intended!

The boat is called Rockland and she is built for long distance cruising and a comfortable life on board too. If you want to see more about trawler yachts and the Nordhavn 47 in particular, there is a link to the manufacturers website in our "useful stuff" section. For the technically minded, there is a little info and pictures of the boat and equipment in the same section

Regards

Richard and June

Sunday, 13 October 2024

Doing the bay and some maintenance

It felt like time to give the boat a bit of a run, warm up the engines and electronics and generally remind the boat that she is not a houseboat. Well, not supposed to be anyway. We picked one of the less windy days, headed out and did the usual (frankly rather boring) run up and down the bay. Again, the coverage of our trip by Vesselfinder was a less precise than that from MarineTraffic. You can see how the former has us crossing land and travelling in (incorrect) straight lines:



The MarineTraffic representation is more like our manic to and fro stuff, giving the main engine a run and also the wing:



We stopped off on the fuel berth as we were pretty low on diesel, the last top up was in spring 2023 and we've done a few miles and used lots for heating / genset over the winter since. So, we splashed in enough to cover our winter 2024/5 heating needs.

After all the excitement, we managed to dig out the little bikes for a few rides, raid the still wonderful Pilot pub for lunch with Simon and Nikki and also catch the cold virus thing that is doing the rounds big time. It felt like old times, when you could have a respiratory disease that was not covid. Not nice but not at all like covid luckily.


Maintenance News:

It was oil and filter season. The genset had some fresh oil and a nice new filter after around 100 hours and 6 months of use. The main engine had the same treatment after our run around the bay to warm the old stuff up. Actually it is easier to do - although it takes way more oil than the genset (19 litres compared to around 6)  and the filter is way bigger, at least it mounts the right way up. You can remove the old one, only have a few drips of oil onto a cloth positioned underneath, then fit a pre-filled new filter very easily. The genset filter is mounted on the side of the engine block so removing it is messy and prefilling impossible. Worst of all is the main gearbox oil filter - that mounts totally upside down. Messy job.

What other fun - well the pipes from the heads to the black water tank were descaled - easy enough using a gentle chemical.  The winter work list has been started, just very very slowly.


at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thanks for your ideas / cheek / corrections / whatever! They should hit the blog shortly after the system checks them to make sure they will not put us or you in jail.....

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)