Hamble Pointing

We had arranged for various "bits" to be done on the boat whilst at Hamble Point. Roland, the MDS engineer who does lots of Nordhavn work, was booked for the engine mount replacement that we mentioned before and also the genset exhaust elbow swap.

One immense frustration was Toby from Keto the local Webasto dealer. Having contacted him ages ago to arrange a service for the heating boiler (it gets lots of use when you live on board all winter!!) he got more and more elusive, then failed to turn up. Of course, the captain had emptied out the lazarette and removed the shielding from the boiler in preparation. Then he had to refit it all....

One of the real issues with the marine industry is how unprofessional some of the "experts / dealers" are. Keto are a prime example - technically great but hopeless at contacting you and doing what they said they would when they said they could. So, we will find another dealer to do the service work.

Wednesday started VERY foggy. The ferries to the Isle of Wight were delayed / cancelled and we awoke to the sound of ship foghorns. the ultimate irony was that the Raymarine test boat came downriver and then stopped on a pontoon waiting for the fog to clear. They have every piece of Raymarine kit you could ever want on board including an enormous digital radar (see the scanner in the picture) but clearly didn't trust it enough to head out into Southampton water. Makes us glad we have Furuno kit! They headed off as it cleared a bit, shortly after this picture:

One good bit - the new motor arrived for the black water (aka holding) tank and it looks much more substantial than the 2 that have already failed. Just the fun of fitting it now of course.... Here is the beefed up component so if you have to buy one, make sure that you get the latest motor as below:

By Friday evening, we had a new genset exhaust elbow fitted, some weeping hydraulic fittings in the steering pumps sealed, new engine mounts fitted and a couple of visitors on board too. These stowaways are better known as the crew's parents of course and are the much revered grandparents of Patrick the penguin. As you can see, he bonds with his granny quite well, especially after she has sampled some fizzy stuff:

The inbuilt navigation PC has been through surgery too and has an SSD drive fitted now in place of the old hard disk - should be happier in the bumpy stuff. Just got to pop into Southampton to get it back and then refit it. Now that, is a job for dexterous people with small hands. The Captain is not ideally suited for this task....