Xmas and going posh(ish)

Xmas kind of happened, as it usually does, and guess what it was at the same time of the year as always too. Nothing too amazing about that. We had an invite to Simon and Nikki's for Xmas eve dinner which was greatly enjoyed.  We then had a quiet Xmas afloat enjoying a little morning walk and then some good food (possibly some fizzy stuff too).

Post the Xmas excesses, we had another one planned though. The Celtic Manor Resort had offered the usual new year deals to try and fill a few rooms on a Sunday night. We'd taken advantage of what was a very good offer and headed over there to sample their 5 star hotel and hospitality. Have a look at Celtic Manor website link for more info.

Being cheapskates, we objected to spending a small fortune on their undercover parking offer so we had a little walk (luckily in the dry) to the building from the far from cheap outside car park. Good service, a great room on the top floor of the building with views over to the Bristol Channel too. OK you also got to see the M4 but didn't hear it luckily. Dinner was booked in the Clubhouse restaurant which is housed, no surprises here, in the golf clubhouse. We resisted picking up any of these trophies to dish out to golfing friends:

Dinner was good but the Tarte Tatin dessert that the captain tried was nowhere near as good as that served at the Pilot, the pub just up the hill from Penarth marina. Naturally it was way more expensive too.

Back in the main hotel, we admired the Xmas train setup that was running around the huge atrium area. This little video shows one small area of it only:

Very intricate and ornate. Quite something as was the timber dragon:

and the view down to the ground from our top floor landing:

The hotel and grounds were beautifully decorated and we were glad we took a couple of pictures that night as the next morning they had all gone. Some folks must have worked rather late that Sunday. A good stay, just disappointing that a 5 star hotel still has a buffet breakfast offering for the hot food in a very crowded breakfast servery area. They need to look at how the Spanish Paradores chain operates!

Maintenance news:

We'd wanted to give the boat a run out for some time, to make sure that all the bits were working properly still. However, the rain deluges that we'd "enjoyed" had washed huge amounts of timber and other debris down the rivers into the bay. There were some monster lumps of timber and big tree branches and trunks floating around  - some half submerged.  We really hadn't wanted to risk damaging our prop on one so we'd not left the berth since our return.

Finally, at the end of December, the worst of the rubbish had been washed ashore or been collected  by the harbour authority guys. So, we got all brave and fired up the electronics and the main engine. Amazingly everything worked OK and we did our usual plodding up and down the bay thing exercising both the main and wing engines:

The route is not terribly exciting but it did feel good to be moving again and feel the boat "alive" underneath us. Returning to the berth we had plenty of weed and junk floating about in the marina too so we had to do everything properly and turn the boat around then back onto our berth with just the use of the main engine. Operating the thrusters would have been too risky - plenty of stuff to drag into them and possibly jam up the blades.  As the water level was low that became a nice challenge since the keel of the boat gets well and truly grabbed by the rampant weed.  One of the few downsides to Penarth. 

The genset was treated to an oil and filter change and the Webasto heating boiler had a new fuel filter as a  late Xmas present as well. We are too kind to these inanimate objects.

Back in the UK, kind of

We'd left ourselves a nice gentle drive from Haro to Santander, ready to catch the 6pmish ferry. Only the weather really didn't want it to be that easy. The day before looked a lot like this:

with even bigger waves off the Irish coast. Our ship, the Salamanca, stayed cuddled up in Rosslare until things calmed down a bit then left to bring some Irish travellers over to Spain. This delay meant our departure time was changed from late afternoon to 1am the following morning. Not an ideal time really. So, we did the short drive to Santander, filled up with cheaper than the UK fuel, went to the nice bay at the north-east of the town and had a walk then a very good dinner (which should have been on board the ferry of course). Still, it gave us the chance to test the Maremondo restaurant which was way better than the 4.0 rating on Google would suggest. We then had the fun of several hours in the port waiting on the arrival of the ferry:

We were very happy to see it arrive, we kept propping our eyeballs open and luckily it wasn't too cold to simply sit in the car, tinker on the internet, listen to music and think kindly of the weather gods and how they can change plans so easily. After boarding, we just retired to the cabin and tried to sleep through the many and varied announcements that have to be made rather loudly before departure.

The trip was a bit bumpy and as the passenger load was light anyway, the Club lounge was very very quiet. We rather liked that I must admit. 

Our arrival time at Pompey was a tad tricky too - instead of late evening, it was early morning, just in time for us to clock the horrid traffic that has to fight through the never ending roadworks on the M27 as we head towards Southampton. Why go that way - well, we had said that we would take Mrs Toddler to the hospital for her eyeball checks that afternoon. In desperation, we hid in a Costa store to let the worst of the M27 mayhem subside and then braved the motorway madness.

A few days later we returned to the poor ignored boat and we discovered that Netflix had sent a slightly worrying email:

They obviously know something we don't.

As well as reclaiming the boat, taking the little Brompton bikes out for some exercise and remembering how all the systems on board work, we did a little maintenance too.

The battery to battery charger that keeps the bow thruster / windlass AGM battery bank charged up from the new domestic lithium bank had failed ages ago. This was the second one of the new generation high capacity Victron devices to go pop in that location. There were a few wild guesses from various technical folks as to why but nothing concrete, apart from the obvious "they are not very good". However, the one doing the same job for the stern thruster battery bank had been fine. The Maricom guys had provided the new charger and two new fuse holders. These were duly fitted:

together with the little black on/off switch you can see in the image. This lets us turn the device off when we might be using the thrusters or windlass in case some strange back feeds are upsetting the rather delicate device. Again, the aft one has been fine and we've not used the windlass since the original charger was fitted. A mystery.

The Xmas season loomed so work on maintenance things was suspended and we lapsed into hedonistic mood again. Such a tough life.