Dartmouth, Totnes and batteries

After arriving in Dartmouth, Andrew the well known (well, in this blog at least) crew member had to depart. So, he had booked a train back home from Totnes, a short bus ride away. We duly launched the RIB and as we all went to board it, the engine decided not to tilt down into the water. Instead the power trim pump made a sad noise and stopped. Very flat battery like. We thought that the battery was in trouble whilst in Guernsey but now it was clearly sick. Not a lot of point in charging it up and trying again as it is now over 7 years old and for a little basic lead / acid battery it has done well.

Of course, having the outboard leg sticking up in the air and no way to drop it down quickly rather messed up the trip ashore to get the bus.... This was fixed by rapidly building the rollup dinghy, digging out the little Tohatsu outboard engine and being very happy when it fired up for the first time since September last year. Just love simple two stroke engines (we know we've said this many times before but that doesn't stop it from being so so true).

The rather posh bus was duly caught:

as was Andrew's train. Train? The announcement gaily said that "this train is formed of one coach". It should have added, "one very full elderly refurbished and very slow coach".

We thought that overcrowding was a London commuter thing, not an early afternoon in Totnes out of the peak holiday season thing. Wikipedia quotes these single carriage jobs as "being used on some busier routes owing to stock shortages". Lucky passengers!

Returning we managed to catch the bus that went via the school in Totnes. Lovely, we learned a few new words that we should not share with such polite company as our educated readership.

A new RIB battery was ordered on-line for delivery to the Harbour Office as the local suppliers were a touch too expensive. As a comparison:

On-line order, delivered £72
Chris Hoyle Marine, the local Yamaha dealer  £95
Darthaven Marina chandlery and Dartmouth chandlery £114.95
(Wonder what our friends in Boatworks in Guernsey would have wanted...)

This was all for identical Numax batteries - a little 86 amp hour guy like this one:

It needs to be relatively serious to support the power trim &/tilt on the engine.

The harbour office team were very helpful but in a "local government establishment" sort of way. They happily took the parcel for us, unprompted offered a way to reduce our costs if we visit Dartmouth often (paying annual harbour dues not daily visitor rates) and chatted about the usual UK obsession - the weather. The friendly / smiling / building relationships bit is beyond them though, they could learn a lot from the folks in Mayflower marina in Plymouth or Penarth or Kilmelford or....

What else, well, we did the obligatory walk to the castle and generally enjoyed ourselves as always in this beautiful spot. The only downside was that Bernie (the Triumph 2000 / Dunkirk little ship man) and Jenni were not in residence so no catch up. However we were invited for drinks onto a nice Nauticat 39 which was berthed on the same mid-river pontoon by some equally nice people. Sorry Stephen, a bigger one than yours. Nauticat envy coming up perhaps?