Bucklers Hard and hard labour

After the trip from Guernsey to Lymington, a short trundle along a benevolent Solent as far as Bucklers Hard was pretty tame. Funny to think that this sort of trip was a normal weekend run for us in the days when we were working....

The sun was out, we sat on the flybridge and all seemed well. Entering the Beaulieu river you get to see the little pygmy lighthouse:

and some rather nice bankside houses :

The village itself is a great timewarp in a stunning location:

Yes, there is some serious cash around here - and paupers like us. We found our way onto the mid-river pontoon just above the Bucklers Hard marina / boatyard area and happily settled in. Lovely views, dinghy needed to go ashore, sun, little wind, plenty of gin on board, all good.

Of course, that has to change a little. You cannot spend all your life having fun so we decided to polish the starboard side of the hull in between walks, lunch at the Old Bakehouse tea room in Beaulieu, collecting the Defender from Ann and Martin's etc etc. The weather was so kind to us - well, it allowed us to do the polishing - you can decide if that is kind!

The main reason for being in Bucklers was that the tenants in our house were due to move out mid month and we needed to reclaim the place and get it sorted ready for some new, very dodgy occupants. The toddlers, who you have met in this blog before, are moving in to enjoy the general atmosphere of Hythe and the New Forest area.

The house, of course, needs total redecoration and we had such fun removing thick limescale from the showers etc etc..... Enough said.

Then the boat decided to bite back, perhaps it was sensing that it was not the centre of attention for a change? The horrid horrid Jabsco bilge pump decided to fail again - another useless riveted diaphragm valve failed yet again. This is the ***** device:

Which is fixed in the most stupid position for access hidden away behind the genset. At least we knew what to do. It involves dismantling the end of the genset cocoon, impaling yourself on the end of the genset itself and the two raw water filters on the bulkhead behind it and working at full stretch. Rebuilding the diaphragm was OK as Andrew (Mr Zephyros) had kindly given us some nice tiny stainless bolts and washers to replace the stupid factory fit rivets. Repaired and rebuilt and tested the captain needed gin in copious quantities to recover. There is a dangerous theme building here.