Island life, fuel and beaches

Well, when you are on a lovely island with loads of dog friendly beaches, what do you do? First of all you try to explain to the doglet that tides make a difference. The beach at Havelet Bay, one of Izzy's favourites, vanishes at high water. Despite that she insists on dragging us all the way down the slipway so she can look over the edge, see deep water all around and then turn to us with an accusing "what have you done with my beach" look:

She struggles with the concept a lot. Luckily a few hours later, normal service can be restored and the crew can be forced to throw a ball for her:

We had some nice walks, hours of beach time for the dog, a great lunch in a local pub and a couple of super coffee breaks in Coco - handily positioned next to the Havelet beach so Izzy could dry off a bit and drop some of the accumulated sand on their floor, not ours. Well worth the cost of a couple of flat whites. Continuing the food theme, we had to visit Anni's terrace at Moores hotel for the famous Apfelstrudel.  It would be so wrong not to test it out. Happily we can report that it is as good as ever, despite the sad passing of Anni herself a couple of years ago.

It was not all gastronomy though. We tortured the doglet by taking her to Pets at Home for claw clipping, pad fur removal and an attempt to remove the fur from inside her ears which was wildly knotted. Poor girl. She forgave us pretty quickly though. We then took her by bus to St Sampson so we could raid the rather good M and G chandlery. It was too hot for little dogs and humans to walk the rest of the way there and back.

The little beach come mooring area on the other side of the harbour had a few strange resident craft. This twin outboard powered dinghy amused the captain no end:

Two elderly British Seagull outboards that brought back memories. Many many moons ago, you could hire one to go with your dinghy when renting a cruiser or yacht on the Norfolk Broads. The captain had the fun of showing the hirers how to use them as part of the handover and trial run. Explaining to a rather "well to do" chap. who arrived in a rather lovely Inspector Morse style Jaguar, that the infernal beast of a 2 stroke outboard ran on a 10:1 fuel to oil ratio and so would smoke a bit (!) was bad enough. Showing him how to flood the carburettor until fuel was running out of it into the river to get it started when cold was tricky. Then letting him see the evil notch on the flywheel whizz round all ready to take the skin or fingers off your hand if you were not careful was the icing on the cake. 

The clouds of blue smoke and distinctive noise then became a minor issue,  As did the 1.5HP trying to push a loaded dinghy against the stream in the river when it was in full flow. How some hirers ever managed to start the things was a mystery. For a demonstration of the noble art of Seagull operation, see this video link You Tube Seagull start-up

We needed to top up with fuel so we contacted the nice Rubis folks and arranged a time slot around high water to meet Gary the tanker driver in St Sampson. As we headed off to rendezvous there, we admired the folks paying well over 15% more for the benefit of using the Boatworks fuelling facility in St Peter Port. OK for the yacht taking on tiny amounts but for anything >300 litres, Rubis wins hands down:

The huge (20 minutes) trip there and back looks like this:

The big looped approach to St Sampson is because there are all sort of nasty rocky bits and swirling currents around there. Since it was neap tide time, and the harbour pontoon we use for fuel dries out, we only had just over a metre and  a half under our keel when we berthed, an hour before high water. Fuelling took the best part of an hour including adding some Stanadyne additive to help preserve the fuel and we sneaked out with not much more clearance. Well worth it though.

As it was a baking hot day, we then chilled on board until early evening when the dog had a run on Havelet beach again. Only the tide was well out and there was an abundance of weed laying on the compacted sand. A couple of people had driven down the slipway, onto the beach and launched their small boats from a trailer. The trailer gives you an idea of how much weed was around:

as does the front of this van:

Particularly amusing was the way that weed was poking out of all the holes in the front wheels too:

One of the tow tricks was an elderly Nissan Navara. They were renowned for having failed chassis legs due to corrosion. A bath in salt water and a coating of seaweed cannot be helping this one much. The weed didn't bother Izzy much, she was so happy to be back paddling again. Or digging:

.

or both.

On the same slipway as the twin Seagull powered dinghy, was this strange landing craft:

Sad cases. who have read and remembered all of our blog posts, might recall this as the work barge for the Guernsey Oysters business. To see the beds on Herm where they grow, look at this video link Oyster farming on channel 5. We seem to remember that the work barge had a famous background too. If you look closely at the side of the barge, you will see several small plates welded onto it. They are to cover up ports that oars were shipped though as this barge was made for a film and was mocked up as a rowing craft, Strange to meet a film star on this particular little stony beach.

Although the weather was good (sunny, warm / hot) the harbour continued to be a bit quiet:

Hopefully you can spot the Nordhavn on the far pontoon. 

Maintenance News:

Well, sometimes life is just like that. We were smugly enjoying the rather wonderful new battery capacity that we have one lunchtime when we decided to fire up the genset - not really to charge them but to run the oven . Since we will have plenty of AC power from the genset (52 amps) we also decided to do some washing, only the washing machine had other ideas. Having worked happily a few days beforehand, it just would not fire up. No light, no nothing. So, we emptied the cupboard from hell that is behind the washer and the dryer, removed the rear panel and got access to the power sockets. Of course, the fuse in the plug was fine. As was the power to the socket itself. 

Everything pointed to a failed board inside the machine - as it is now elderly and has been heavily used since 2009, we guess that we cannot complain too much. Is it worth trying to fix an 18 year old Miele washing machine, even if you can get the parts? We reckoned not. Lots of fun to come sourcing and fitting a replacement. In the meantime we will have to join all the other folks who use marina laundry facilities, and bring stuff back to the tumble dryer which still works. Mind you, removing the panel was a bit of a shock.....

You get to see the rather boring  back of the tumble dryer:

.

and that was very messy indeed, loads of fluff around. It looked like the exhaust hose was not sealing properly at the bottom - some nice factory person had put loads of sealing goo around it but that wasn't doing the job either. So, a massive clean up was needed. The flexible pipe was removed from the three little plastic clips that are supposed to seal it in position, a ton of fluff removed from inside the cabinetry and the hose refitted with a couple of cable ties to hold it more securely. It was tempting to break off the three plastic clips and use a huge jubilee clip around it but the ridged hose would not have been that simple to anchor in place. Here is a slightly cleaned up and refitted hose:

and you can see the remaining grot in there. Cleaning out took ages, kneeling in the locker and working through the hatch. At least we found another problem and could try to fix it.

Below this lives the errant washing machine. Plenty of fluff had found its way down behind that too so when we get  to remove the  dead device, it might be very very messy indeed. The question is - will the hoses be long enough to allow the machine to be wrestled out forwards? If not then the whole job is going to  be a real PITA. It will have to wait until we are back at base and have time / help to check it out. Grr.

Portland to Guernsey

After many days of particularly windy weather, it was so nice to see a forecast like this one:

It had to be time to head over to Guernsey. Actually time was the challenge- the tides were all wrong for a daytime passage and not great for an overnight one either. To optimise the tides, we would arrive in St Peter Port after midnight - not ideal as the Little Russel channel is usually plagued with poorly marked pots and the little markers get dragged underwater in the strong streams. So, we decided to make the best of a daylight trip and accept that we would be pushing the tide more than necessary, adding around 45 minutes to the trip and a few litres of fuel. So be it.

We headed off on a beautiful sunny morning at around 6am. This was the view towards the Eastern ship channel exit from Portland harbour, with the blind partially down to shelter the helmsperson's eyes from the sun:

We headed down the side of Portland with plenty of tidal help, avoiding pot markers and consuming an early breakfast underway. Here is the pilothouse view of the (in)famous Bill of Portland:

and now from a little closer and a little blurry perhaps with a zoom lens:

Just not too close.

It had been a nice calm trip to the Bill, once out of the shelter of the land, the remaining Atlantic swell and the wind induced waves made the sea a bit "sloppy" - very typical for the channel crossing. The waves were only around a meter high but in a confused pattern so the stabilisers were in action to keep the crew and doglet happy

The planned route over involved letting the tide take us to the west initially, then back east to a point just off the shipping traffic separation zone to the north of Alderney as we headed more or less south. From our course, you can see that it almost worked. We had to make a couple of fairly big diversions around commercial shipping - the big kinks in the track below until we reached the shipping lanes - the straight bit:

Here is one of the guys that forced us to head too far east initially:

Only a little container feeder ship but still not worth arguing with!

As we approached the separation zone the usual gaggle of ships ploughing along the lanes appeared:

together with several French fishing boats who seem able to ignore the rules of the road and cross the shipping lanes at strange angles, not 90 degrees. No matter, it was a lovely day and the crew and 2nd crew member were enjoying the sun and air whilst the captain  looked on from the pilothouse:

Once clear of the shipping lanes (only one small diversion needed there) we decamped to the flybridge enjoying the lovely weather and giving the plotter up there more to do than it usually has:

As we approached Guernsey, the 2nd crew member was on sharp lookout:

probably trying to see the very tempting beaches. As we closed on the entrance to St Peter Port harbour, we realised that our liner curse was in full flow again, this was anchored off:

Luckily arriving late afternoon meant that the liner passengers were being taken back on board - we passed the pilot boat heading out to the liner as we entered the harbour. Result! We were met by the every friendly Jason, the harbour guy in his dory and as all the walk-ashore pontoons in the outer harbour were busy, we were directed to the one "unconnected" pontoon, known as Swan 5. No swans though. That meant we had to uncover and free the RIB, launch it and then take Izzy a whole 20 metres or so to the connected bits so she could have a run ashore. 

Directly opposite us was a truly enormous Nordhavn, Mermaid Six. Friendly folks on board but we could only briefly chat to them from the RIB as they were heading off the next morning. Actually that worked well for us as we could then move into their spot on the walk ashore pontoon:

The harbour was not terribly busy for the time of year. Maybe because they have jacked up the berthing prices considerably, especially as the facilities are, to be kind, sparse. According to the rather unhappy harbour staff, this was to help cover the huge deficit that the airport and the Island's airline Aurigny run up. A drop in the ocean I would imagine and a drop that causes a significant drop in visitor numbers too perhaps. Apparently many folks are just mooring overnight now, using the lovely island as purely a staging post to France. Quite a waste really.

We had a large yacht as our neighbour:

who also headed ashore in their RIB - a big Caribe with a huge outboard, We felt sorry for the davits that had to lift it, fitted on the stern of the yacht.

The harbour was suitably tranquil that evening:

It felt good to be here again even if we were a little tired. The RIB was left in the water ready for Izzy's early morning pump out trip and we slept rather well. The passage took around 11.5 hours berth to berth, longer than it should as we had to fight the tide more than you would wish to, in order to have a daylight passage. As there is no maintenance news to report, we will end things here.

Chilling (apart from the outboard) in Portland

As the little dog likes trundling around in the RIB, we decided to indulge her. We launched it, fired up the outboard, left it running for a while to check all was well (it hadn't been used since we left Penarth) and then headed off. Izzy was in her normal spot - sitting up front with paws perched on the steering wheel looking very much in charge. We planned to just potter around the marina area as it was very windy so going outside the breakwater would have meant plenty of spray - as it was the wind was making some waves splash against the walkway pontoon and causing spray to be thrown up there.

We headed off and after 50 metres or so, the engine coughed and stopped. It steadfastly refused to restart too, so the oars were quickly unshipped and the captain had the unenviable task of rowing back into the wind towards the boat. Luckily for us, a little fishing boat was returning from checking their Oyster beds and kindly gave us a tow to the pontoon. Grr

The captain had been a good boy and religiously run the carburettor and filter dry after each use - the wonderful ethanol mixed in now just helps the petrol degrade even faster and gum up the fuel system inside the outboard. It looked like this had happened despite always leaving the system empty. To be fair, the fuel we were using on this trip was pretty old. Self-inflicted pain we guess. So, the engine was treated to a carburettor strip down and clean. Here is what they look like stripped down:

An exciting number of little parts, small jets and galleries to clean out. Removing the thing is a bit of a PITA too - one bolt is tucked alongside the cylinders and you need the ubiquitous very slim 10mm socket on three extension rods that has to be threaded under the fuel filter and some cabling to reach it. The carb came off, was stripped down, cleaned and rebuilt, looking a bit like this:

Refitting it was fine until it wasn't. The slim 10mm socket fell off the end of the three extension rods when it was being removed. The socket rolled into the front cover area of the outboard and although you could see it, there was no gap big enough to retrieve it through. We now know how to remove and refit the ignition system on a Yamaha 20. It was not a good day... 

We binned the old fuel "in case", bought some more fresh E5 stuff (the super-unleaded that has less ethanol mixed in), added some fuel stabiliser, flushed out the old stuff from the fuel lines and the outboard then behaved OK. Time will tell if this is a proper fix as we couldn't run it hard for long. 

After all that torture, we decided to spread the misery to the doglet - she had a shower and looked grumpy afterwards as usual:

The captain just looks his usual bemused self. It was such a fun day....

Things picked up a lot for all of us the next day with a walk along the harbourside, across to Chesil beach and plenty of paddling and stone chasing for the doglet. Lovely weather, just windy again but great views to Portland:

Plenty of time to stand in the shallows and train us to throw stones or a ball for her:

Chesil Beach is good for walking, as long as that is not on the steep pile of pebbles itself! Climbing to the top is hard work for old people like us. The Fleet lagoon area is way easier:

Of course, we needed regular coffee breaks and this rather uninspiring industrial unit houses a very good coffee and bakery place:

We did partake a couple of times. OK, maybe more than a couple. What else amused us? Well, we took the bus into Weymouth for a wander around, did the same but then the train to Dorchester and enjoyed the riverside walk there and the lovely old buildings too. This is the Dorset museum:

and the riverside walk:

Alex and Gisele arrived in Weymouth in their HUGE Nordhavn 55 after a bumpy trip across Lyme Bay.  So, we met up briefly as we were intending to depart for Guernsey the following day. We also got to say hello to Mark, the owner of the first Nordhavn 51 built, Awanui. Mark was in the area, anchored up and heading east the next day. He produces some wonderful detailed You Tube videos on his travels that make our little blog look as sad as it is.

Then the dilemma - finally the strong SW winds were abating and changing direction. There was a little weather window that would get us happily across to Guernsey and the tide times were good too - leave and arrive in daylight still taking full advantage of the spring tides so a very quick run. Only Mrs Toddler had a hospital appointment in Southampton a couple of days later, potentially involving not just the grim sounding eyeball injection but some tests that could take up to 4 hours.  We decided to cancel our boat trip, and instead take the bus / train / bus back to Hythe so we could chauffeur her and the crew could sit with her in the hospital. The joys of public transport were upon us. As usual, a bus from Southampton to Hythe had been cancelled so when the next one arrived at the train station it was already full (so nice that they run a single decker to try and mop up two bus loads of passengers). We ended up using a service that wombles around and stops at every molehill en-route. Sitting in the cooking temperatures on the bus was not nice for us or the doglet.

The trip back was equally fun - the train ended up over half an hour late but we did pop in to see Alex and Gisele in Weymouth which made things much nicer especially for Izzy although she had to wait for her treat:

Torture. Gisele was not as hard on the doglet. She had specially purchased some treats and an edible toothbrush which Izzy devoured happily and rapidly.

Back afloat, we used a couple of days to launch the RIB and give the hull a scrub - two weeks of sun in the clear water here had prompted some fouling which got scrubbed off. Nice job. We also tried (and failed) to tire the dog and get her bored with the beaches. Fat chance of that. Our final trip to the nearby Lidl store seemed quite strange after many (free) days here. We like the Portland Marina folks - v friendly and helpful and they didn't even charge us for power.

Maintenance news:

The gear and throttle control on the flybridge had started to misbehave. The little button that you press to take control at that station was not always working on the first press. Recently it had got to the nth press before it worked and n was slowly getting bigger. So, the time had come for some intervention. We ordered up a new little "push to make" switch from the internet. Nothing too technical, just needed to be waterproof and capable of handling the huge 5 volts the control system uses! Here is what they look like as supplied:

and here are the connections underneath ours:

Irritatingly, the new push button switch we'd bought was too long to fit into the device - it would foul one of the bolts running across the control, a replacement needs to be very short indeed. So, undeterred, we fitted the new button onto the appropriate terminals and secured it in the locker under the helm position. If the original button doesn't work, we can reach inside the locker and use the new one. That will keep us going until we source a shorter replacement and it might well stay in place longer term as a backup.

Lymington to Portland rather early in the morning and in the fog

We had rather a good time in Lymington, as usual. Tina came over on the ferry and stayed overnight with us - mainly to see Izzy of course. We did some food shopping, went to the Monkey Brewhouse for an excellent evening with Ray and Sara who live in staggering distance from it and forced ourselves to a Marshfield farm ice-cream. 

Meanwhile, Paul the tekkie had been in touch with the USA Zeus folks about the strange comms issue and we implemented a good workaround - using a simple cable that luckily had been pulled through the boat to allow the Zeus box to see the battery voltage even if the comms link dropped. We think they have a software bug to fix.

Our planned trip to Portland was in excellent calmish weather. the tides were a little uncooperative though, forcing an early departure well before it was light. The FLIR was invaluable once again. Izzy was suitably confused when her morning pee trip was at 3am in the dark.

Our timing for tidal help was good. Heading between the forts we hit 11.7 knots over the ground for a speed through the water of 6.4. Rather nice. We only managed to capture 11.6 in our photos though:

The route is simple enough, down the side of the Isle of Wight, then a nice inshore trip which was possible as there was no firing at the Lulworth range:

and you can see the silly departure time and how long it took with lots of nice tidal help:

The only drawback was the fog. As soon as we passed the Needles at the end of the Isle of Wight, it was thick fog. The forecast said patches - this was one huge patch that lasted all the way so no pictures to share, sorry. We were glued to the radar, all the way to the marina in Portland. You could only make out the entrance through the huge breakwater of the harbour when we were around 30 metres away. It was tiring.

Typically, that afternoon the fog cleared and the sun came out, as did another Nordhavn. Chubby, a Swiss flagged 55 came and moored astern of us, From this angle, we don't look quite as eclipsed as we did in reality:

If only it had been weather like that for the trip over.

The good news was that the boat behaved perfectly as did the furry crewmember. The staff in Portland were great, telling us we could stay as long as we wanted and that a visitor from Penarth was very rare (this is a sister marina so freebie berthing for us). What was not to like?

Finishing off, getting culture and heading to Lymington

After all the fun of the relaunch (we still cannot see it as fun by the way) we opted to spend a few extra days in Swanwick. That was to allow the Maricom folks to finish off testing / setting up the Zeus alternator regulator and to calm down a little. It also allowed us to book tickets to the Mayflower theatre in Southampton to hear Martin (of Ann and Martin fame) sing in a mass choir event. We might be biased but his choir were way the best and he looked rather dapper in an orange bow tie. For those folks who know him, here is a "spot the star" game:

The other Anne (yes, it is confusing, a plethora of Ann(e)s in our lives) delivered the brown furry doglet for a little holiday with us. Anne was off for yet more surgery. We had a good day with Anne, Izzy and Richard an ex work colleague of the captain. It involved lunch at the pub then coffee and cake after a little walk down to Universal marina. Tough tough day. Izzy managed it rather well:

At Universal we saw another Nordhavn 47 out of the water, only this one had quite a bimini support structure going on:

We are not sure it will catch on, or appear on the Nordhavn options list.

It felt good to finally escape the rather up market and expensive Swanwick. Paul, the Maricom man had real fun getting the Zeus alternator regulator to talk to the Victron Cerbo box which kind of controls all the battery functions and the inverters. It would connect, run OK and then the link would drop for no obvious reason at all. As the Zeus box was suddenly disconnected from the domestic batteries it was trying to charge them "blind" and so to protect everything goes into limp mode:

It decided to do this on the way to Lymington. To be fair, limp mode is far from a problem. You can change the alternator output by tweaking the "field" current so it would be easy to balance the load from the navigation gear, fans etc. Even if you used the Zeus app to kill the alternator, the new batteries would allow a good 36 hour run using only 50% of their capacity. Then there is always the genset. 

Our trip to Lymington was not fun. Firstly because the Zeus to Cerbo link decided to die and secondly because it was rough. A strong wind over tide in the Solent, causing the typical unpleasant short sharp waves right on the nose. We were happy to tie up on the Dan Bran pontoon, take the doglet for a walk and then open a gin bottle. Washing the salt off the boat could wait until the morning.

The relaunch day from hell

We had the boat all ready for the rather early 7:30 am relaunch. We even got ourselves there nice and early to pop into the office to ask about where they wanted us to berth. Only that was a waste of time as the berthing master on duty said that there were no spaces free yet, thanks to the Motor Yacht show that had finished the day before. We reminded him that we were booked in by Maricom, a commercial tenant and he looked a bit sheepish.....

Meanwhile, the boat was hanging in slings ready to drop into the water, half an hour early.  So the pressure was on - he told us to just stop on the fuel pontoon, which is the one that runs up to the lift bay and that they would call us when they had a space. OK. We rushed to the lift bay, climbed on board and were dropped into the water.

Getting the boat ready to move involved removing the pins from the stabiliser fins to set them free, checking for any water ingress and then firing up the main engine. When the stabiliser control panel was fired up, it made a tortured beeping sound. That was not good. Rebooted, it did the same, with a screen display that looked more like a fish finder than anything to control the stabiliser settings. A third reboot and it did the same, finally coming up with a comms error. Wonderful. The Golden Arrow guys had to plug a sensor into the control box to realign the fin sensors after the bearings were replaced but this made no sense. As there was nothing to do, we had to leave the fins floating free which makes boat manoeuvring highly amusing as you have two big rudder like things that just move in the water flow past the hull and can turn you, act as brakes etc, Wonderful. 

The captain headed to the flybridge for the best view and saw a RIB astern of us that we would have to shimmy round. We gently reversed out of the bay and the idea was a little squirt on the stern thruster to kick the stern out so we could back past the moored RIB. Hitting the thruster control the crew who was in the aft cockpit heard a tortured squeal. There was no thrust....  So, a kick ahead to push the stern out with the rudder hard over and a little bit of bow thrust to stop the bow from swinging into the walls of the hoist dock. Then a very slow reverse past the RIB and onto the pontoon.

Tied up we took stock. Stabilisers that would not work and a dead stern thruster. Bad words were said. But why? Surely we cannot have picked up some debris in the hoist bay after relaunch that jammed the thruster? That would be so unlucky. The stabiliser issue was well above our pay grade so a depressed captain and crew pinged a note to the TRAC engineer that had reset the fin sensor position for us. Meanwhile, the captain had a good look at the thruster controls and power supply. This is the cut off button:

A big thing fitted in the lazarette. The Maricom guys had removed the cover to change the wiring around for the new battery to battery charger that would look after the thruster batteries. It seemed that when the cover was refitted it managed to hold the button in a half on, half off position. Wonderful. A couple of on/off movements and the thruster was back to being happy again. One problem down.

The Golden Arrow guys were excellent, arriving promptly and working around the Maricom team who could finally commission the new alternator controller now the engine could be run. Worryingly, the well experienced Stabiliser man said that he'd never seen a control panel failure like ours. It booted perfectly and worked OK until the engine was started and hydraulic pressure was applied, then it went crazy. The European main man duly arrived too and after much debate, decided that the panel must be at fault, not the control box itself. The only challenge is that the new panels will not work with the (now very) old control box that we have. So, they fitted a replacement panel and a new boot chip in the control box, reset the over 200 parameters and control was finally restored. Even better, as the system was working fine before their work, they said that they could not charge us for the panel. A new panel alone is around £3,500 so that made us very happy indeed. The panels are known to fail as they age but normally not in that way. All the earlier pain and frustration seemed worthwhile somehow. The new one seemed happy enough:

The day slowly improved as the configuration of the stabiliser system was set and checked and after some tinkering with a connector, proper control was regained and we could centre the things. For info, here are the newly fitted test port and pressure switch that we mentioned in an earlier post:

The day was slowly improving and the marina folks gave us a berth to use so we moved the boat, happy that we had the ability to unpin the stabiliser and centre them properly and that we had a stern thruster again as we needed it. After we tied up and the captain went into the engine room to put the pins in the stabilisers, things went downhill again:

Grubby oil leaking out is not ideal. Massive understatement, We cleaned it up, felt around the hydraulic connections to the ram and the end of the ram itself - no evidence of any hydraulic fluid leaks there. It turned out that the Golden Arrow man had used some oil when splitting a bearing and the residue was just washing out the graphite grease used to refit the bolts, The mood lightened again briefly until challenges getting the new alternator regulator to talk to the new Victron Cerbo box brought more gloom.

We had a much needed gin before dinner. It had been one of those days, only more so.