Of course, since there was no data on the O2 phone or EE tablet, we needed to go for coffee ashore to check the details. There is one pretty interesting place with an eclectic taste in furniture and décor called Pinky Murphy's:
The good news is that their coffee is excellent with friendly service too.
To optimise the tides, we left mid afternoon in glorious sunshine. Then plodded into the nice head seas. Of course, the forecast said that the wind was going to veer from NE / E (pretty much on the nose) to SW overnight. They didn't get it right of course.....
Rounding Start Point and the headland there were nice 35 knot gusts and with wind over tide that chopped things up a bit. Of course, once clear of the headland it all calmed down a bit again. Amazing how you get accustomed to the Nordhavn's sea keeping ability. We did look out of the pilothouse and realise that there was no way we would have set off in our previous boats with this forecast, and yet we were having a pretty placid trip.
Excitement? During one of the engine room checks, the captain noticed a little smear of oil on the engine block. What?? Perhaps we were turning into the Sea King helicopter after all. Some investigation revealed it to be coming from one of the oil hoses that run to and from the filter mounting. The fitting just needed tightening up a little but of course it was the hose nearest the engine block and so you cannot get a spanner onto it unless you remove the outer hose or the oil filter:
Neither of these are very practical with the engine running! Rather than leave and monitor it, the other hydraulic hoses in the area were released from their clamps and moved (of course, they were nice and hot too!) and the fitting was sweated up a bit using a crude method - gas pliers. That stopped it and warmed the captains hands nicely.....
Overnight crossing Lyme Bay was quiet and as the sun came up, we saw how misty it was too. Under 1/2 mile visibility and some idiots in small fishing boats were out there with no radar or radar reflectors doing 20 knots. Luckily the big Furuno radar can pretty much pick up seagulls on the water so we saw them even if they were "flying blind".
After so much time in quiet cruising areas, the radar picture as we approached the Solent was busy:
The big lump of land on the top right is the Needles rocks / lighthouse on the Isle of Wight. On the left is Christchurch Bay and behind us, Poole. You can see how many "blobs" were out and about for us to avoid and that was outside the Solent! Welcome back to the wildly busy boating centre of the UK.
We decided to go into Lymington and spend a couple of days on the nice Harbour Commissioner's pontoon there, near the harbour entrance. You get to see all the activity and the ferries are a bit bigger than the ones we had been watching for several months crossing Cardiff Bay. Steve, fancy painting this one?
Overall the trip took about 22 hours with little drama to report.
Maintenance news:
Well, nothing apart from the oil hose that got tightened up. One of them had come loose before (about 4 years ago though) but perhaps it is time to remove them and refit with some nice Loctite thread locker. Might be a (slightly messy) job for next week.
It is funny how most of the recent work has been down to fittings that have decided to weep a bit. Perhaps all the original sealants used in the factory have reached end of life. Or perhaps some inappropriate sealants were used on high temperature / pressure joints? Knowing how automotive folks tended to keep one bottle of thread sealant / locker in their tool boxes and use it on absolutely everything, we fear the latter!
Either way, we've had a few joints to remake in the last few months.
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Thanks for your ideas / cheek / corrections / whatever! They should hit the blog shortly after the system checks them to make sure they will not put us or you in jail.....