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.

Battery time - more about them than you ever wanted to know

Our domestic battery bank was getting towards the end of its useful life. The capacity had dropped a bit and we knew that we would have to probably replace them next year. However, as we planned to visit Guernsey for fuel, a south coast haul out seemed sensible. So, we opted to go to Swanwick where we could torture poor Paul from Maricom. They've done most of the more complicated electrical / electronics work on the boat and were accepted by our insurers as OK to do a Lithium battery upgrade for us. That was a glib statement - the insurers (Navigators and General via Towergate) really do not understand much about batteries. One condition they decided to impose was that we "do not charge the batteries off the boat". Er? They are heavy things fitted into lockers to run the domestic system?? So often we found ourselves trying to educated them a bit on battery technology. Almost the blind leading the blind really.

Why lithium now? Well, when we last replaced the 6 domestic batteries, we felt that it was way too immature a technology and the management systems were still pretty primitive with the risks of  batteries simply shutting off etc etc. Things have progressed a lot since. After much head scratching and many hours of research, we decided to go ahead and put in 6 Roamer 24v lithium batteries to replace the 6 12v AGMs. The AGMs were arranged in three 24v banks, giving a realistically useable 390 Amp hours of 24 volt power. You could take out more but at the risk of reducing the expected life of the AGM batteries significantly.

The lithium option gives us a useable 690 Amp hours if we pamper the new batteries and only drop them to around 50%  but you could take out 1100 happily.. A dramatic upgrade! The other big win is that they don't need to be brought to 100% charge regularly. The AGMs like that and if we are using the genset, it takes ages and ends up needing to running the genset on very light loads to finish the charge - which is bad for the genset.  Ironically the lithium batteries are cheaper than a new set of Lifeline AGMs too. Well, the base batteries are but of course you need lots of other modifications to the charging and management system hence lots of boxes of goodies:

We opted not to go to Lithium for the thrusters and anchor winch. Why? Well the powerful motors in those expect to run on AGM batteries where the voltage supplied drops quite a lot under heavy loads. Lithium batteries don't do that in the same way and so the motors would get a higher voltage than they are designed for, not good for their longevity. Hence we simply renewed the AGM banks running those and fitted battery to battery chargers - they will be charged from the massive domestic battery bank in future. (For the real trainspotters, we could have fitted proportional control to the existing thrusters but the cost was £££££. An even nicer solution would be to install new thrusters that are lithium ready but that is £££££££££).

One of the first jobs was to bin the horrible old charging relay setup, which linked the thruster banks to the main battery bank for charging and disconnected them when in use. We were very happy to see the relays and switches involved get ripped out:

The new battery to battery chargers were put in, which will permit proper three stage charging at up to 50 amps. Again, for the terminally bored, AGM batteries like to be charged in three stages and like high charge currents. Using the old "link to the domestic battery bank" approach, they rarely got this. The charge voltages were effectively controlled by what the domestic bank wanted, no matter how depleted the thruster batteries were. It was rare for them to see a bulk charge voltage. The original charging setup was not good for the life of the thruster batteries.

Whilst Paul and his man Mark were struggling to un-plumb the old domestic batteries, we had a walk. There are plenty of "different" craft in Swanwick now and a lot of style over substance it seems. This anchoring arrangement struck us as wildly complex and something that is just guaranteed to jam up sometime. All done so that the anchor is not visible when retracted:

The phrase "it will all end in tears" springs to mind, however anyone buying that boat is most unlikely to do any anchoring in the UK - a blast from Marina restaurant to marina restaurant with the sound system cranked up seems more realistic. 

We used the dinghy crane to lift the old batteries out and into trollies as they weigh around 70Kg each. The cardboard boxes in the foreground contain the new lithium chaps, in the background are the old AGMs and, in the middle, boxed up new AGM batteries for the thrusters:

The old guys looked a bit forlorn, knowing that they were heading to be recycled:

Mind you, they hadn't seen any of the nice places we had visited as they lived in closed compartments in the lazarette so their life was not that exciting anyway.

This is what a new one looks like, emerging from its' wrapping:

They are real lightweights in comparison too - 38Kg each. The weight saving in batteries alone more than compensates for the heavier Brompton bikes we swapped to a while ago! Work was going well, Paul looked happy(ish)

as the inverter / chargers went topless to be reprogrammed for Lithium charging:

with the batteries snug in their new homes:

Switching the boat over to running on those felt like a real step forward. The monitoring kit was duly installed (a Victron Cerbo GX for anyone who is remotely interested) and the screen started to reveal the secrets of the inverter pair and the new batteries:

The alternator needed a special external regulator, we had opted for one called Zeus. Not because it sounds stronger and sexier than a Balmar or a  Wakespeed - we are not that shallow. This was because it had good feedback for the simple app based setup and management, firmware updates, was the preferred solution of the battery suppliers and seemed to fit the bill nicely. It was fitted in a void under the master cabin, just forward of the engine room:

Yes, it is fixed on it's side - so we can see the lights on it easily. The cabling got tidied up after this picture by the way. The alternator itself gets modified to bypass the original internal regulator.

The Zeus box was fitted after we were lifted out of the water and so could not be checked before relaunch (the boatyards dont want you running the main engine whilst you are propped up out of the water. Any induced movement might disturb the props they use to hold the boat upright and that could end badly). We had to wait for life afloat again to test and fully setup the alternator controls. 

Meanwhile, some neat little battery to battery chargers had been fitted to keep the two thruster banks of AGMs topped up and the start banks for the main and wing/genset too. These look after the start batteries:

and these way more powerful chaps (50 amps output at 24 volts, not a weedy 17A) handle the thruster banks:

Things were as complete as they could be, just wating for relaunch to test the alternator charging setup and fine tune things. Good progress. We ran the boat "off grid" whilst out of the water for 4 days and used around 35% of the battery capacity. That included running a coffee machine and an electric kettle via the inverters to keep ourselves and the other workers suitably lubricated. Very happy with that! The proof of the pudding as they say, is to come......

Swanwick lift and maintenance - pretty boring stuff really

Swanwick marina had their annual "Motor Boat Show" thing planned and so they were short on berths, even for little boats like our Nordhavn.  We originally wanted to have around 4 days out of the water but this morphed into 10 so that we were high and dry for the boat show time. Actually not a huge issue as the rather high cost of hard standing space is still way cheaper than the exorbitant cost of a visitor berth there. The lift crew are, as usual, a law unto themselves. Maricom asked them about lift timing so they could ensure that the boat was driveable despite all of the battery work going on. No luck, despite them being a commercial tenant in Swanwick.

So, on the allotted day we prepared the boat and waited, while Paul and Mark worked away on some battery installation things. There will be a separate post about that amusement sometime.  Then we had a call asking us to go around to the hoist bay and saying that we would drive straight into it and get lifted. Phil and Jess from Nordhavn Europe were on board catching up so they came as extra crew for the long voyage. Only it became way longer as we hovered off the hoist bay for nearly 15 minutes, waiting for a very slow Fleming to start engines and back out. When we entered, one of the hoist crew was plain obnoxious and needed some serious customer handling training, Very very unimpressed. Les, the yard supervisor man who has been there for many years and kind of knew us from when we were permanent berth holders, looked almost sheepish about things and tried to "suck up" a bit afterwards.

Here we are emerging from the salty stuff:

We retired to the Nordhavn office for coffee whilst the boat was being pressure washed and chocked up. This time they did a very good job supporting her - on the last lift here they used only two chocks underneath the keel and we were mightily unamused. The first report is on the effectiveness of the "snake oil" stuff that we applied to the props last year. Amazingly, it worked pretty well. Almost no fouling on there compared to years in which the prop was left bare. The coating still looked OK so we decided to run an experiment and leave it untouched for a second season to see if it was still better than bare metal:

The crystal prop stuff seemed worth the cost and effort, much to our surprise and delight:

Our folding prop on the wing engine needed new stops inside it (when the propeller blades fold out they rest against these and ours were wearing away. As removing the prop assembly is tricky even though we have the big special spanner needed, and giving the whole thing an acid bath is even harder thanks to the size, we asked the evergreen Geoff from Swanwick marine engineers to do that for us. Geoff is a proper old school engineer, in his 70s and is one of the few people we would trust to work on the boat there. Here is the P bracket and shaft, with the prop hub and blades removed

The crew and then the captain with some brick acid did an excellent job cleaning up the keel cooler:

aided by the glorious weather that allowed outside work to continue :

We cleaned and painted antifouling stuff on the bits that needed it. Replaced the bow thruster anodes, greased the seacocks, removed and acid bathed the main engine rope cutter and did some stainless and GRP polishing too. 

Inside the boat, we drained down the coolant, and replaced the O rings on the gearbox oil cooler. This is simply put, a messy job and not one that is enjoyable. Luckily it is only needed every 4 years. With the system drained down,  the thermostats were removed:

and then replaced:

as preventative maintenance. They were getting on a bit, like the captain and crew really.

We'd been waiting on some more coolant to arrive as we planned to swap out the main engine stuff early, to save having the job when, possibly, we don't have a car and access to a council refuse site to dispose of it. That became a comedy of errors - the 20 litres of pre-mix we ordered on line prompted a message from the supplier saying that when they went to the warehouse, they found their stock computer was wrong and they had none. So, we decided to order the 20l of concentrate they had instead, after negotiating a better price as they wanted more for it than 2x30l of premix. We pointed out that we also had to procure the distilled water and so....

We were told that the concentrate was "on the way" but the courier kept saying that they didn't have the parcel yet. We contacted the supplier who promised to chase them. Another message and they assured us it would be shipped and delivered the next day. Sure enough, it was but it arrived as pre-mix the stuff originally ordered, not concentrate.. A credit later we at least had some coolant but we also now own 20 litres of distilled water and a 10l drum to mix it all in. This little saga burned many hours.

We could then drain down the entire system via the keel cooler and refill it nice and slowly. The cleaned up wing prop with new stops was refitted with tons of grease inside it, anodes fitted and the boat was pretty much ready for relaunch:

Inside, the stabilisers had a top end overhaul (new bearing surfaces, hydraulic oil and filter change and at long last the pressure gauge was swapped for a test port that the captain had bought ages ago. Pressure gauges are known to fail in a nice spectacular way and we didn't fancy mopping up all that messy oil coming out at lots of PSI. We also fitted a new pressure switch - the manufacturers of the system, told us that the older unit had a history of failing as they aged and ours was nearly 20 years old. Again, we'd bought a replacement a while ago and that was fitted too. 

Finally, the Seafire fire extinguishing system was checked and certified OK by the dealer, Golden Arrow who also did a chunk of the stabiliser work for us as the fins have a sensor that needs to be realigned after the new bearings are fitted.  Very luckily as it turned out....

During all this fun we stayed with Ann and Martin who live very close by. An excellent B and D service indeed, plus a couple of Toddlerville trips to take Mrs T to her normal spot - the Southampton hospital eye department and on a little shopping spree. 

Les, the boatyard man was most accommodating offering us a choice of times for relaunch. The tide times were less than ideal so we expected some fun getting into a berth afterwards. We popped into the marina office the evening before the 7:30 am relaunch to ask about where they wanted us to go for a couple of nights once back in the water (pre-booked by Maricom) and were told to "ask again in the morning". What could possibly go wrong?

Cowes then the Hamble revisited

Being mean types, we thought that the ideal next port of call should be East Cowes. Why? Well, E Cowes is part of the same group as Penarth so we get free berthing there, except for weekends. With the bank holiday approaching and a lift out and work booked in just after then at Swanwick, a little Cowes stop off before going there was good.

The tricky bit with E Cowes is the tide. It kind of roars through the pontoons so you need to arrive at the right state of the tide. Here is the "official"  info about it:

Fortunately for us the right tide time to arrive in Cowes fitted with chucking out time in Lymington and the short trip through the Solent:

The various wobbles in the course were due to yacht avoidance tactics. It is such a shock being back in the Solent with so many pleasure craft around. We trundled upriver to the marina, backed into a berth and settled down. After lunch we reported in to the marina office and were greeted as a very rare thing. No, not because we were on a Nordhavn, but because we were visitors from Penarth. Is seems that very few Penarth boats escape the captivity of the Bristol Channel and no others make it to Cowes.

The marina manager kindly set up our Penarth access fobs to work in the Solent marinas, shared some of our distain for the Boatfolk marketing / the central office folks and was most welcoming. 

We had arrived just before the Round the Island Powerboat race. We witnessed several race boats being launched and tested, often with very loud straight through exhausts attached to their huge petrol engines:

Luckily you don't get to hear that one.

We took the chain ferry over to the much posher West Cowes which was amusing in the extreme. If you do an internet search on the new chain ferry you will find lots of violent criticism of the council, the way the ferry was designed and built and the reliability of the service. Bearing in mind that there has been a chain ferry operating there since 1859, you would think that they understood the tides and the river flow. Oh no, the new ferry needs a little pusher boat to help hold it against the stream during peak tidal flows. The council end up chartering this little boat and very bored skipper on a regular basis. Funnily enough, the last ferry which was a bit smaller, could manage unaided:

You can see from the wash coming out of the stern that it was working quite hard too. Rather embarrassing all in all for the council folks and expensive too. After exploring Cowes, grabbing a coffee and raiding a couple of shops, we headed back. Lovely weather, lovely day.

Our second day on the Island involved a walk along the E Cowes shoreline as far as you can go - there is a permanently closed gate now due to landslip trouble. Again, lovely weather. Returning via the huge Waitrose which is rather incongruously situated there, we had lunch on board and chilled for a while (well, most of us did, Linda went for a long walk to help with the Fitbit step contest). We then took the ferry again and met Alex and Gisele, the owners of Lady Grey the HUGE Nordhavn55 for dinner in a local pub:

Dinner was fine but the entertainment.... What had to be one of the worst singers / guitarists ever was crooning / caterwauling away. We asked the staff not to pay him - they agreed that he was terrible (the serving staff closed the kitchen door to try and drown him out) and told us that it was "Open mic night" so anyone could sign up and perform, no payments of course. We tried to tempt Alex to a guitar solo but he resisted, quite firmly.  The music, if you can call it that, was so bad we were tempted to pay the guy to go away. Much merriment ensued as we joined in, making wolf howl noises that still sounded better than the performer. Quite a night.

The one drawback of being in E Cowes and then wanting to head to Swanwick is the tide thing. Both marinas suffer from quite evil tides through the pontoons. You've seen the Cowes info above and we knew Swanwick from when the boat was permanently berthed there. If you are well out from the shore, the tide rips diagonally through the finger pontoons and at mid tide can be really nasty, even for the massively powerful plastic fantastic flying machine boats with many hundreds of horsepower on tap. We have around 165 of them to push our near 40 ton boat and a long deep keel that the tide can pick up and move sideways very nicely thank you.

Since leaving Cowes at a sensible time means arriving at Swanwick when the tide is flowing more or less at its peak, things can get interesting, We headed off just before midday as the powerboat race fleet was assembling in E Cowes. Good timing, it was getting noisy. We slowly headed over to the Hamble river and when we got to Swanwick saw that the berth we were allocated was not much wider than our boat, with a shiny looking Azimut thing next to us. The tide was fierce and there is no way we were going to be able to reverse in a straight line back into the small gap and fight the sideways tide at the same time. So, we turned around, headed downstream again and went onto the mid-river visitor pontoon run by the harbourmaster. Lunch, chill and then Alex with the HUGE 55 came into view:

Not only does their boat look massive, it was also very shiny thanks to a couple of guys from the Netherlands who had just finished polishing the superstructure for them. We didn't feel too jealous, our superstructure is in dire need of polishing but our bank account felt happier that it would be a DIY job.

Having waited for the tidal stream to drop, we headed back upriver, backed into the rather tight space and chilled. Andrew looked in a contemplative mood:

whereas Linda looked to have been at the gin:

This picture really doesn't show you just how closely cuddled up the two boats were:

When the stream / wind pushed our neighbour towards us, the fenders were interlocking meaning that we could not motor out unless we pulled up ours. It seems to happen all too often in Swanwick to smaller craft like ours. Yes, when we were permanent berth holder here back in the dark ages (2009-2013) we were one of the bigger boats in the place. Now, we are a rounding error and get stuffed into most unsuitable spots.

At least all the crew were happy though:

We rounded off the time with our visitors by getting the train to Southampton, a bus to Hythe and visiting Toddlerville, returning in the Toddler wagon. On the last morning, we met with Alex and Gisele and went for breakfast at the revamped Boathouse restaurant. We were joined by Vince and Clare, owners of a Nordhavn 43 that we'd not met before. A good time ensued and the regulation group photo was taken in the cockpit of the HUGE Lady Grey: 

We then became semi-famous, being mentioned on the Nordhavn USA website. Have a look at website link for an almost factually correct version of things.

We took Andrew and Linda to the train station so they could head back to Weymouth. The boat seemed strangely empty without them on board after 10 days.

Maintenance news:

Well, we didn't do any. Far too busy being sociable. We so need to catch up on things now.

Plymouth exploration then to Lymington

After an evening of catching up on life, the universe and everything, we walked around the city with Andrew and Linda. The centre is still in chaos with lots of building work after all the trouble with the trees that were removed sneakily by the council. We so hope it is worth the upheaval and cost - personally we think they have to flatten most of the ugly postwar shops too. However, it is easy enough to escape to the Hoe (the waterfront area) and to be tempted by the coffee and sweet treats at the favourite stall near the Mayflower steps. We resisted this time though:.

Optimising the tide times for a trip to Lymington meant a late afternoon departure. As most marinas want you out by noon, we asked in the office if we could have a short stay berth from noon until around 4:30. The nice folks told us we could just stay there, nothing to pay. Apparently they don't evict visitors until 3pm anyway. We always love the friendly and helpful reception there.

So, after another wander, a raid on the local Lidl shop and a very full rucksack for Andrew, we returned to prepare the boat for departure. The Border Force craft on the outside of the breakwater was abandoned by the crew, the fenders were riding up onto the pontoon and the hull was rubbing nicely against the timber:

We decided not to try tucking them back as we are sure there would have been CCTV images of us that could have been misinterpreted.  Mind you, seeing something that we buy with our taxes being treated like that was not nice. So, we headed out and enjoyed the last bit of sun and a fair tide heading towards Salcombe. We had purposefully put in a couple of waypoints well south of there as we knew it was an area rife with fishing pot markers that we would be transiting through in the dark.  Sure enough there were plenty of them, even 2.5 miles offshore. The FLIR was busy, this image just giving you an idea of how the wave pattern looks:

Once clear of the pot area, things were easier, we settled in to doing watches and that was simpler for us than normal as Andrew did some as well. The sea was calming down nicely, the stabilisers were not working hard at all and things were going well with only a few fishing boats who had turned off their AIS system to track on the radar. Somehow they always seemed to be close and a nuisance when the crew was on watch. 

We arrived south of Portland Bill in perfect time for some strong tidal help as you can see from the plotter image:

For non boating folks, the yellow / red arrows are showing the tidal strength and direction, in other words going with us and a good 2 knots or so. Lovely assistance, at some points we were managing more than 10 knots over the ground. Things stayed quiet until a glorious sunrise - here seen through a grubby windscreen:

You can see the early morning condensation on the deck, it hadn't been raining or rough enough to splash sea water up there. Just off the Isle of Wight is a narrow channel passing the Needles rocks and an area known as the Bridge - seeing the big cardinal buoy there made us think that we were nearly back in our old stomping ground:

The tide carried us nicely up the Needles channel to Hurst castle:

and then into the Solent itself. We were well before  noon which Lymington harbour quotes as the earliest possible arrival time but we called them on the radio, hopefully. It was our lucky day - the Dan Bran pontoon was almost empty as the Saturday overnighters had all left to take the tide east. We could head straight in and moor, passing the little yacht race hut thingy that has stood at the river entrance for many many years:

Suitably tied up on the pontoon we managed lunch, showers and then a walk into town. Lymington has changed a fair bit recently, it looks a little less prosperous but still very appealing. We did struggle to see how anyone could drive a car down this entrance though - Andrew stood in the picture to give you an idea of size:

After a very good dinner in the Kings Head pub, we returned to the boat just as it was getting to be dusk. Quite an atmospheric and calm evening:

All in all pretty good weather and company.

Maintenance news:

Well....... Ages ago, the Ultra pump switch for our main bilge packed up and refused to turn on the pump. We were in sunny Northern Ireland at the time and getting a like for like replacement was mission impossible. The only ones in the UK were 12v not 24 volt units. So, the captain got hold of and fitted a little Whale switch instead that worked just fine.  Captain Rae, the slightly famous owner of Albatross, another Nordhavn 47,  helped get a new Ultra switch from the USA for us. It was a painful process but not the fault of Capt Rae, more the US Postal Service. 

We were going to fit the new switch during our annual liftout fun but fate wanted it done earlier. The little Whale switch didn't want to turn off the pump after kicking it into life. Bad news.

So, the captain and our most helpful and practical guest Andrew went to swap it out for the brand new Ultra switch, like this one: 

The slight challenge was that the wiring  on that was very different to the wiring on the original - the factory had clearly played around with things. We had real fun (yes, that was British understatement) checking the wiring, connecting up the pump, figuring out why the switch was properly powered up but the pump would not run and finally cracking it. What should have been an hour's job at the most turned into a much much longer process. A learning opportunity indeed, but not one we wanted. Poor Andrew.

Anyway, the thing is installed and working properly and the little Whale sender seems to be OK - it had some contamination on it which upsets the senders. Cleaned up it worked fine when tested.  We now have a spare. We hope never to need it. Several hours bent over the little hatch playing with the switch and wiring were plenty enough in one human's lifetime. Our knees and backs said so.

Falmouth to Plymouth

Falmouth over the bank holiday was not really that busy. We were able to wander around, visit the shops for supplies and generally enjoy ourselves. Even the train to Truro on Easter Monday was not rammed. Norman picked us up from the station and took us to Wadebridge where we enjoyed the regulation cuddles with Indie the labrador and some ball throwing for Stanley, the ball obsessed Jack Russell. He hasn't changed much 

Norm and Julie took us to Padstow (or Padstein if you prefer since Rick Stein gentrified the place) where we saw a more normal crowd of holiday folks. Parking was tricky as was avoiding the folks who liked wandering into the road aimlessly as though they had bought the place. Perhaps because they owned a holiday home in Rock?

Lunch was at a Paul Ainsworth bistro place, Rojanos. 

Good food, sadly variable quality service though. The manager came up to talk to Norman after the meal and handled the issue very professionally. A flashback to being at work when we both thought "I would give her a job". So happy that we no longer need to worry about such things! 

The return to Falmouth on the train was subject to the usual railway fun. This time every other train (there are two an hour) from Truro was cancelled due to the guard being taken ill. Looked like nobody wanted to come in on a bank holiday and cover for him / her. We realised how we almost expect a train journey to go wrong now and how immune to it we have become. Luckily we were not still in Cardiff trying to travel around the valleys,  where things were in chaos thanks to emergency repairs to a bridge.

The clouds built and the wind had a real "edge" to it when we walked to Gyllyngvase beach. A few hardy souls were braving the water though:

As Andrew and Linda (the N43 Zephyros owners) were coming to join us the following day in Plymouth, we raided the Co-op and staggered back up the hill to a warm boat.

Leaving the happy place of Port Pendennis the next day was OK though. A chat with Mark the manager, a bit of boat prep for sea (not too bad as we'd not got things scattered everywhere this time) and then we headed out in nice sunny and pretty calm conditions. Here is the view astern of the marina and National Maritime Museum - the odd building with the tower on the left of the picture:

Plenty of fleet auxiliary craft and little patrol things were around in the commercial docks:

We happily headed out to sea again and barely needed the stabilisers as it was so nice (initially at least). Our favourite little lighthouse on St Anthony's head said farewell:

just as poorly marked fishing pots said hello, in a quiet and often almost impossible to spot way:

That one was tiny but colourful. The black cans or old transparent milk bottles are way worse. The trip across to Plymouth was pretty quiet apart from some pot marker spotting and dodging. All went well. Approaching Plymouth that all changed:

There were 4 naval vessels (one from Canada) exercising outside the harbour and then one entered to anchor in the approved area just north of the big breakwater.  It made the captain happy to hear that even the best professionals get it wrong. HMS Richmond called the port control folks four times asking if they were OK to drop their anchor and each time they were told that they were still not in the correct spot for anchorage number 7. On each occasion they were told how far and in which direction to move. Each time it didn't work.  Then another UK naval vessel was supposed o be deploying their seaboat which would enter the harbour to do a crew transfer. Several minutes later they called to say there was a problem launching it and they would swap to another. Then the radio on that boat was very poor and the port control folks got very frustrated with them.  We think that the captain of the Canadian warship must have been wondering about the competence of our navy. We did.

Heading up to Mayflower Marina was OK, a large naval supply ship was leaving so we had to hang around for that before going to our allotted berth on the inside of the breakwater. On the outside was a Border Force boat with lots of crew on board who were standing chatting. Strangely nobody offered to help our crew with the mooring  lines as we tied up opposite them. Normally folks help each other - official guys like police, harbour patrols etc too. Their ability to totally ignore everyone and everything going on around them was amazing and so different to our usual experiences.

We wandered up to the office, chatted to the lovely folks there, then met Andrew and Linda from their taxi and got them settled on board. It was lovely catching up.

No maintenance news to report, again the mechanical and electrical bits all worked OK. We gave the wing engine a little run approaching the harbour just to make it happy and  so it didn't feel ignored. We fear that the genset was jealous and might get even with us when we need it next.