A maintenance (half) day

Why spend a day locked away in the engine room? Well, firstly because outside was horrid:

For the non boating folks, "very high" sea state means waves 9 to 14 metres high. Not much fun in a 15 metre long boat.

Instead, the captain had one of those virtuous days, doing a few things that have been on "the list" for a while.

For the tekkies / people who want to gloat:

The first job was to replace the genset fuel fittings that the captain had a rant about earlier on - see  Holy Loch maintenance 

We had some new fuel line fittings sent to us in Penarth and of course fitting them also means draining down the fuel system a little - an ideal time to replace both the filters too. Somehow having push on fittings for the hoses in a fuel system with no hose clips as insurance seems wrong but as they have built lots of generators using them, I guess it is OK. The captain still fitted some "insurance" though.

The planned genset valve clearance check got parked when time and interest ran out. Also because Steve (the trip boat man, keep up please!) kindly took the Captain by car, in the rain, to a paint supplier in Barry to get some etch primer. Wild wild life we liveaboards have...

For the tekkie folks again - the winter / spring work list looks like:

• Normal fuel filter changes
• Oil change for the wing engine
• Valve clearance adjustment for the main engine and genset
• Replace the exhaust elbow on the genset (not leaking but they tend to coke up after several hours use and they can also corrode though over time - hot metal with hot salt water being sprayed inside it....) The plan is to replace it with a stainless steel version that is reported to last a little longer. Very happy that our main engine has a keel cooler and hence no need to suck in vast amounts of corrosive salt water! See below:

There are also a couple of things that we will "get done" for us. The rear engine mounts take a lot of weight and torque and over time they split. One shows signs of this and so rather than wait for it to get worse, we will have them both replaced when we have our annual lift out. We don't have the kit to jack up the back of the engine / gearbox to replace them!

The other thing is a service for the heating boiler - a big Webasto unit that sees a lot of use during the winter and we like to have it working just in case we have a typical UK summer this year..... Why didn't we go south for the winter???

A little aeronautical diversion for the interested.....

Some of you might have looked at the rather impressive video of Colin the 747 Captain (yes, Colin. All rumours about his dress code must be scotched now) and his last flight in a Lightning fighter jet that was mentioned in an earlier blog entry. For sad old characters like the captain, the lightning was the star of the RAF Coltishall air displays when they climbed pretty much vertically off the runway with lots of noise and afterburner.

It always looked like an airframe just wrapped around the two engines - twice the speed of sound but a very limited time in the air as it had little room for fuel on board. A real "Cold war warrior" - built to intercept Russian bombers, For younger folks, or the non UK readers, Wikipedia Lightning entry gives you a flavour:

The cockpit is a real 1960's throwback and looks less impressive than a modern big Nordhavn!

So, have another look at the video of Colin having fun http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S7Mj33jhek , then read his description of the flight below. Most revealing:

Glad you enjoyed my last Lightning flight; I enjoyed it at the time too! It is at Warton, near Preston. I was a civilian at the time having left the Air Force the previous year. I was working in the production test department and got to fly quite a few aeroplanes but obviously chose the Frightning for my last flight. It weighed about 2000lbs less than the knackered ex-RAF ones we had there and had very few hours on the airframe so it wasn’t bent. Also, it was silver, the way God intended Lightnings to be and the apprentices polished it every week so it went like the proverbial off a shovel! The Air Force ones were so knackered that it was difficult to get them above M1.8 but this factory ship got to about M2.2 and was still going when I chickened out! You don’t realise the thrust required to push through the air at that speed until you close the throttles and your eyeballs pop out a bit as you are seemingly thrust forward as the aeroplane decelerates violently.

In the video, we measured the initial pull up at 8 feet which was possibly why the jet blast knocked the camera man over. The push down to achieve that was a bit abrupt but you cannot see the little aerial I had to clear first! Sadly, the climb was without reheat as I was already on minimum landing fuel as I had to hold off for a short time to allow someone to finish some work in the circuit testing a new aeroplane so the climb wasn’t as punchy as it could have been. Was nearly vertical though! The fast run is just subsonic, around 700mph, or just over 600kts. That is about 20-30ft and is quite exhilarating as your brain cannot process the peripheral vision input at that height so you start to get tunnel vision as the brain dumps the side bits.

I do miss it! You can assure everyone that I fly my 747 strictly by the book!

For Louise - I know this isn't going to help your fear of flying much. Sorry. It is probably a bloke thing....