Agatha's pad and commissioning misses

Although we had visited Greenway House (Agatha Christie's holiday home on the Dart river) before it was many yeas ago. So many that we were still working then and we find that you see things through very different eyes when you have more time to enjoy and explore.

Just in case someone hasn't heard of her, look at Wikipedia although we think that Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot have made it around most of the globe.

So, we took the dinghy ashore to Dittisham (Ditsum) and then the stupidly expensive (£2 per person one way) little ferry over to Greenway as there is no public landing area there. The house isn't too imposing:

but the interior is pretty much as it was in Agatha's time with lots of personal things still in place.  As an example the doll sitting on the chair is the one in the portrait of her as a young girl:

She was renowned for being very self - effacing and didn't like the limelight too much. As an example, her "Most excellent order of the British Empire" award was found at the back of a cupboard and is now on display:

This was backed up so beautifully by a story from one of her staff:

The kind of English understatement that we used to be famous for. Now we seem famous / infamous for other less appealing traits.

One of the most poignant rooms is the library. During World war II an American Coast Guard guy who was stationed in the house during the preparations for D-Day painted an amazing frieze around the walls using camouflage paint (all that was available) depicting the history of his unit. Amazingly he survived D-Day and the war. When the house was handed back to Agatha, she told the authorities not to paint out the frieze as it is part of the history of the house:

From the grounds you get great views down the Dart river towards Kingswear and Dartmouth:

They also gave us a nice view of the boat in what looked like a wildly busy area but in fact is nothing like that:

The little naval training job in the foreground was one of several that were busy teaching the Dartmouth Naval College trainees something. We know not what as they seemed to spend a lot of time towing little "whalers" alongside and waving pretend guns about - at least we think they were pretend:

Maybe BA Colin can enlighten us as he spent some time being turned into a navy type.

After such a lovely day there, things returned to a more normal UK summer on Sunday when it blew a gale and rained a little:

"Little" is another old fashioned English art - the one of understatement.

Maintenance info:

We've mentioned the Nordhavn Owners Group or NOG before. A great source of information and tips from some very experienced and smart people. We just read and absorb and appreciate, not smart enough to contribute.

One of the posts was talking about the communications battery charger. To explain, the boat has a separate 12v Lifeline AGM battery which lives under the main cabin floor with a dedicated Victron charger. It runs the things that cannot operate on the main boat 24v system like radios, CCTV etc. The battery is mounted pretty high up and so ought to keep going for a while longer than the 24v or 240V AC systems in the event of flooding - handy to keep the radios going when crying for help.

Well, one European owner found that his Victron charger was not properly set for AGM batteries. They come from the Victron factory set for gel batteries and his had not been changed. As our boat was of a similar vintage and as we knew that dear Russell the long departed and much disliked  (by us) Nordhavn Europe commissioning man was less than thorough, we had a look:

As you can see it is a cosy spot and to get the protective plastic cover off the charger we had to dismantle part of the bed surround by removing a pre-cut panel. After uncovering the charger, sure enough, our setting was wrong as well. Changing two DIP switches fixed it. They are in the blue blob hidden on the far side at the bottom of the charger - hard to get a picture as it is effectively under the bed!

Too late to save this battery (it is the original!) but as it is always used "on charge" it seems to have survived OK. For the non tekkies, AGM batteries need different charging voltages to the gel versions and a different profile too. We had checked our pair of Victron inverters that charge the house 24v system soon after we got the boat but hadn't thought of this little separate charger.  You continue to learn in this world.....