Loch Shieldaig to Lochboisdale (Outer Hebrides) and some maintenance for those who are hungry to read about a problem at last!

Leaving at 10 pm felt more like an early evening thing with the light levels. In fact, it didn’t get properly dark at all. Twilightish from 12:30 to about 2:00 am but that was it. The start of the trip was wonderfully atmospheric, a little mist hanging between the mainland and Skye, the mountains peeping over the top of it, wonderful sunsets. Sorry but no pictures for you to enjoy as the captain was trying to sleep before taking over for the passage around the top of Skye.....

The route was an interesting one, slowly turning south as we headed down the western side of Skye, with a little shelter from the Outer Hebrides until the wind turned southerly:

Our route seems to start in the middle of the sea though - looks like the AIS signal was not picked up properly by the shorebased stations. For info we started out from the purple circle! The first dogleg in the course heading south is because there is a traffic separation scheme in place and we had to either avoid it or cross at right angles. This course allowed us to clip the top end of it, a minimal diversion. We were amazingly lucky - our course didn't have to alter by a single degree to avoid all the ships, we just added 100 rpm to our speed to give a nice 1 mile clearance from a southbound tanker who was heading for the TSS. Sometimes, you get lucky.

The second diversion was when the crew had to avoid a pesky fishing boat who turned, stopped and then set off directly towards us. We think he was upset at seeing an English registered boat on his AIS screen and blamed us for brexit, the lack of Scottish independence (so far), austerity budgets, Bonnie Prince Charlie and the number of calories in his Irn Bru. The rest of the run into Lochboisdale was a matter of plodding into the building waves (on the nose), avoiding the pot markers (and there were plenty) and staying awake. The latter was hard as all the TV and radio coverage was on political meltdowns, stock market meltdowns, exchange rate meltdowns and similar exciting stuff. We amused ourselves by switching it all off and thinking nice thoughts instead. This is not a trip to do in the dark, far too many markers, some of which were right in the entrance to the TSS lanes too.

As we headed up Loch Boisdale, it started raining so no nice pictures of that for you either. We have stolen a couple for you to enjoy though as it is a pretty place:

There was no VHF reply from Lochboisdale harbour and the phone message was to “pick a berth” so we did just that. The place has a strange layout – no hammerhead berths on the two “legs” – just shortish fingers so we had a nice job trussing up the boat ready for the forecast strong winds. Our plan is to stay for a while and explore the islands in the chain here:

Around lunchtime, Coll the harbour man arrived, said hello and was incredibly helpful and friendly, giving us local information, advice, a chat about the area and the new harbour development etc etc. It seems that Lochboisdale Harbour cost about £11 million to do with lots of nice EU development money. It involved building a causeway between two islands, then two wavebreaks to form a harbour entrance. Phase 2 was supposed to move the ferry terminal to here and build a bigger commercial vessel quay. He said that post Brexit, he wasn’t sure where the funding would come from. We cannot escape the impacts of this it seems. Don’t think he held us responsible though. Talking of impacts, we luckily still have quite a lot of fuel on board! Cannot imagine that we will see 32.8p / litre again….

Maintenance news

We have some!! For the people who like problems and getting the spanners out this should amuse you. Shortly after heading off, the captain did his first engine room check and noticed that one of the two belts that drive the small frame engine battery alternator had broken. Luckily it hadn’t taken the second belt with it when it thrashed around a little in its death throes! Here is the very sick belt, removed after arrival in harbour :

To be fair, if it had killed its twin, that would not have been a disaster. The main alternator that runs off the huge multi-V belt would still be working and we could simply parallel the engine battery to the domestics so it got charged. In fact, the battery alone would have provided the small 2 amp current draw needed by the engine for the rest of the trip. We would just have to isolate the power feed to the alternator to save it overheating whilst not being driven. See, something at last for the spanner addicts!  

These were the original belts and so have run for 2,600 hours. Just over a year ago they were showing signs of wear but nothing too dramatic. The captain of course didn’t check them this winter as getting the belt guard off is a horrid job. Hum.

Both belts were replaced with the spares. Yes, the captain's huge spares stock has been depleted a little. One of the problems with the Lugger 1066T setup is that the two belts don’t run at the same tension or properly parallel. The bracket holding the alternator doesn’t hold it totally square to the pulley on the front of the engine that the belts run on. Are both belts really needed to drive one small frame alternator that in reality never has to produce much power after replenishing the startup current draw? Well, the engineers at Northern Lights are way smarter than the captain so we defer to their logic in fitting two, whatever their reason was!

We have more info for you as well. During another engine room check, the captain noticed that the stuffing box (for the non-boaters, that is not a rude phrase! Look at Wikipedia) was running much hotter than normal:

The potentially OCD-inspired regular temperature checks on various components had paid off. For some reason, the stuffing box that had run quite happily for around 370 hours since the last adjustment / repacking decided to stop leaking and hence cooling. Again, for non-boaters, the scary thought of water dripping into the boat through this is quite normal and needed. It helps cool and lubricate things. Don’t worry, it is a regular slow drip, not a torrent!

The captain could understand the water intake increasing as the packing wears but for it to stop is less likely of course. It looked like the nice slippery material used to coat the packing material had managed to bung up the water flow. So, whilst underway, the bolts that hold the “gland follower” part were slackened off a little and then it was “persuaded” to expand with a few carefully aimed thumps! Sure enough, the odd water drip started with lots of nice sticky brown gunge being washed through, then a regular drip and the stuffing box went back to the normal 22 centigrade operating temperature.

Lesson from all this – keep going with the OCD engine room and temperature gun checks at regular intervals!