Heading south,

Just as birds like to migrate south for the winter, we old folk have similar desires. The nice forecasters in the Met Office had talked about a wet and windy winter for the UK so we needed little encouragement to board a ferry heading south with quite a late departure from Portsmouth:

It was heading well south too - a 33 hour trip:

The two nights on board the Brittany Ferries ship were fine. The C-Club lounge was, as always, rather a nice place to hide in and the food on offer was OK too. We whiled away the time quite happily, reading and people watching. The grey pound was strongly represented as you would expect. Of course, we don't class ourselves as such. The Captain has no hair left to go grey and the crew has been that colour for many years so....

The track of Salamanca looked pretty odd. For some reason they aborted the normal route going inside the islands off the Brest peninsular and did it rather late on too, see the odd wriggle in the route:

The small kink off Guernsey was to be expected as she crosses the area leading to the TSS that we've mentioned several times before when heading to the Channel Islands by Nordhavn. Lots of ships all concentrated into one area. Perhaps the decision to head around the islands off Brest was because of traffic too? No idea, the sea was nice and calm, visibility was perfect. No matter, with the current oil prices we guess the skipper would be unpopular with Brittany Ferries management. That diversion would have been expensive.

The ferry docks pretty early in Santander - 7am UK time. We had gone really wild and paid for priority disembarkation. Why? Well, it was not that expensive and we knew that there were some long delays as everyone has to submit their biometric data into the EU's border control system now. Another little Brexit gift. Having seen some of the folks on the crossing attempt fairly simple things like filling their plates with food, pouring coffee etc, we fully expected the DIY process of scanning the passport, then fingerprints, then having a photo taken, then answering several questions on the screen to take a long time.

As you can see, we were pretty close to the ramp when it opened at 8am local time, perfectly on time too:

We were off the ship, into the portakabin setup with the entry system terminals, all updated, approved and on the move again within 15 minutes. The £15 for our priority escape was worth every penny. We've waited well over an hour before and that was when passports were just being stamped, a way quicker process. How we hanker for those days of old when you waved your passport at a bored official who saw the cover and nodded you through....

Our first stop was to be Segovia. New place for us and one that we added in to our itinerary as Brittany Ferries had cancelled our original sailing. We had to rebook for two days earlier and so needed an extra two nights on the way south. We are very glad that we did. It was a holiday weekend and the Parador hotel which sits high up on a hill overlooking the city was busy. Our room had a nice balcony, and in the evening, this was the view of the Cathedral:

Absolutely beautiful - that grainy image is the best our phone camera could do at night bearing in mind the distances. In the still early morning we were treated to this spectacle:

and the day just kept getting better. We drove to a parking area closer into town and walked to the Roman Aqueduct. Wow. Built in the first century AD and still in use until 1973:

and situated right in the middle of the city. It was worth climbing the stairs to get the view of it from higher up too:

As we've come to expect in Spain, another stunning Cathedral:

and a beautiful Alhambra as well:

We spent ages walking around the city, enjoying the holiday mood, architecture, cleanliness and cheap coffee.  On the way back we filled up with way cheaper diesel too ((£1.46 per litre compared to the typical £1.98 at home). The evening was rounded off by another excellent Parador dinner. Happy folks.

Maintenance news:

The only blot on the landscape so far has been a 7:30 am message from the boat saying that it had lost mains power. We contacted the marina to be told there was a big outage on three pontoons and that a sparky was on site. Later that day we had a call from the assistant manager to say it was more serious, probably underground cabling and he had seen we were away. Yes, the fridge and freezer were running and needed to be. Two full Sub Zero drawers of food going off and leaking / smelling would not be nice to return to. Luckily since the Lithium battery upgrade we have way more capacity (see earlier posts on that) and we can check on the status remotely too. After a couple of days the picture looked like this:

The batteries had been at about 80% charge when we left, on shore power and were now showing 74% Nothing to worry about yet but we need to keep checking. If the temperature drops to freezing and the little tube heaters kick in, that will be a totally different story. We've no idea or information on when the power problem might be fixed. It might end up as time to get Hugh the helpful assistant manager to fire up the genset for a while. Other boats around us might like an extension cable run to them as well!

Pottering and preparing

What to do when back on board after a road trip? Well, plenty really. Apart from trying to catch up on maintenance / replacement work that needs to be done this winter, we tried to have some fun as well. Dinner at the Pilot one evening was in the fun category, with the lovely owners of a Nordhavn 86 based in the Mediterranean. Only a teeny bit bigger than our 47 as you can see from this MarineTraffic image:

The Pilot was raided once more for Sunday lunch with Nikki.  A proper happy making place.

We took the arms off the pilothouse helm seat as they were getting very worn and dropped them into Wayne the trimmer for recovering.  Our flybridge has one large seat behind the two individual chairs for the helm and lookout. It has always been a pian - the seat cushion and backrest are both made in one piece. They are huge and hard to store in the winter, plus the foam isn't the most comfortable either and the vinyl is showing signs of age. So, we squeezed them into the car and took them to the lovely ladies in Bristol at the Bristol caravan and boat seat cover centre. The plan is to get them replaced, this time halved and in a nicer outdoor fabric rather than vinyl, with a way better foam sandwich inside.

Since the boat hadn't had a run following our return from Dun Laoghaire we felt it was time. We had a choice of very windy days, wet and windy days or a simple windy or wet day. We opted for a slightly soggy calm day and did the regulation if slightly tedious, run around the bay:

Getting the navigation gear going, warming up the wing engine and giving the main a good hard run too. We love having the sheltered water of the bay available for trips out during the winter, runs in the RIB etc. An ideal area. 

We were glad that we'd completed our little trip before this lot arrived:

and in case you think that is just for the offshore areas and that the Bristol Channel would be sheltered:

It isn't often that you see am inshore waters forecast saying "decreasing to severe gale force 9".  Mind you, the sea state in the English Channel was going to be worse, here is the forecast for the Portland / Channel Islands area:

Sea state of very high means 9 to 14 metre high waves. Almost as high as we are long.  With no desire to leave the berth either under power or because we had broken free, we simply added a couple of fenders and checked that all our lines and covers were secured, ready to ride it out. Sure enough, a grim day but not quite as blowy as the forecast - Penarth is pretty sheltered really. Rain - oh yes, plenty of that. A good job that we took the boat out earlier on as there will be loads of timber coming down the rivers into the bay. 

So, in preparation for heading somewhere warmer and hopefully less soggy, we gave the bikes a clean and lube, then packed them away. They are joining us on our upcoming travels.

Maintenance News:

When we returned with our untouched heating boiler, it had to be refitted into the little hiding place in the lazarettte so we could keep warm. That went relatively well, here it is back in situ:

and we await news that the test harness has finally arrived at Butler Technik. No idea when we will remove it again. Amazingly, the thing fired up first time, no trouble getting fuel into the pump and burner. Bleeding air out of the coolant loop around the air handlers took a bit longer.

Microwavegate was calling. If you remember, our built in device failed when we were in South Uist, not an ideal place to find a replacement. We had bought a free standing microwave in Stornoway that was annoying the crew a lot. So, we took the old failed unit out of the cabinetry and measured up the space available. Typically, the cabinet isn't "normal kitchen unit"  sized so you are very restricted in which makes you can buy. The crew was very happy that a Miele offering was the perfect size. The Captain and our bank manager were less impressed. So, one was duly ordered and of course the fittings to hold it in place were different to the failed Miele (8 years old) which had also been different to the original which failed after 9  years of pretty heavy use.

The new fittings were duly installed and the new device went in amazingly easily compared to the struggles we had with the last one: Naturally the fascia was a different size so the beading trim around it has some big gaps at the corners now. We can live with that, getting new beading to match the cabinets would be hard:

A happy crew again and a smart new microwave, Only confusing bit is that they have swapped the positions of the start and stop buttons. Why??.

What else did we do? Well, the Yamaha outboard on the RIB had a run, then fresh oil put in for the winter. The engine room fans were corrosion protected and we treated the bikes to a long overdue clean and chain lube session, together with some fresh sealant in the tubeless tyres  The main engine shaft stuffing box was nipped up a bit after the run around the bay as it was  dripping more than necessary. All in all we were pretty busy but had ticked a few items off the to do list which felt good.