Finally afloat again and heading for Lymington

Previously, we mentioned that the fates were conspiring against us for a relaunch and trip back to the Solent area. As a reminder we needed a low enough wind strength to allow a relaunch and a high enough tide to get out of St Sampson harbour over the failed flap gate which is stuck in the up position and hence neap tides are a no go. Finally it all came together. Miracles do happen, even in January.

We took the ugly little ATR from Southampton (no picture as it offends the shortly to retire 787 chap Captain Rae) and were happily reunited with our  Nordhavn getting a lift there from the kind oyster lady. (Little memory test for you all).

The boat was ready to go, the grot from the nearby power station had been washed off too. (As an aside, it seems that the power supply to the island from a cable to France has been interrupted for a while and the two big ships' diesel engines in the power station called Trudy and Freddy have been busy generating electricity and chucking out oily sooty pollution too). Marine and General have a deal with them whereby they wash off boats that are on their hardstanding and bill the power generating company. Must add several pounds to each consumer's bill during the year!

Things felt quite homely despite being propped up in the air. So nice to reclaim the boat and start to remember what life on her is like. (Good by the way!)

A day of doing things like changing the main engine coolant followed. For those with a moderate technical interest, the Lugger / John Deere engine is wet lined to allow easier rebuilds and so is a bit fussy about having good coolant inside it. For everyone else, we drain out about 23 litres of  expensive two year old coolant and replace it with new expensive coolant.

The relaunch went well:

Kieran, the hoist operator is good and well deserved his Costa coffee that we delivered from across the road.

Enjoy that nice copper coloured bottom for the last time. Next scheduled haul out will be spring 2020 and things should be green by then - partly slime, partly oxidised coppercoat.

We decided against a fuel top up as we will burn quite a bit on trips around this winter and on heating too. The plan is a trundle back to Guernsey in the spring to top up so we have full tanks ready for a run north - hopefully Orkney and Shetland but the weather will decide our final destination as always. With the Brexit stupidity going on we decided that the Baltic has to wait until we know what is going to happen, if we need visas, if we will end up in jail for using red diesel in the EU etc etc.

The good news after launch was - no leaks. The bad news was - no leaks. Confused? Well, the stern gland is supposed to drip a little but it steadfastly refused to. New shaft, new packing, all very tight and leak resistant. The follower was backed right off, in and out of gear and reverse, moved the boat to a berth in St Sampson marina, still no leaking. Eventually the captain got it to behave and we've never been so happy to see water coming into the boat before, albeit in small amounts.

A night on the berth there was noisy and a bit bumpy. It reminded us why the Guernsey harbours in a strong wind with anything "east" in it are very unpleasant indeed. We wanted to get afloat on the Friday afternoon as the forecast for the following week was disgusting - strong easterly winds! There was a little weather window on the Saturday that we could use to scuttle across the channel in. OK, scuttle is relative in a Nordhavn. We just wanted to avoid what was coming - see the red strong wind warning areas on the met office chart:

:

As you can see, that is the entire country....

We headed off at 5am. Pitch black, still a force 5 from the south but way better than the 7s from the day beforehand. Heading up the Little Russel channel we were very conscious of the pot marker menace and so we had our searchlight on, illuminating the area just ahead of us. Good thing, the crew spotted one only a few metres ahead of us and we managed to avoid running over it. The stress was not over - the previously slightly leaky sterngland became as tight as the proverbial duck's ass. It resisted kind attention from the captain, hard astern sessions, a totally free follower and more astern but it seemed that the crew swearing at it had the desired result as a nice gentle wet patch developed underneath it and the temperature of the stuffing box dropped.

The route is a well known one:

with the S curve to allow the tide to do its thing rather than fight it all the time. It was grey and uninviting out to sea with rain showers, a couple of metres swell from the west and waves on top of that from the southerly wind. "Sloppy and confused" is a good description - the stabilisers were busy knocking off the roll from the waves on the stern quarter and swell on the beam. The autopilot fought them gamely to point us roughly in the right direction. When the tide turned to go westerly and the swell / wave combination reached its peak the stabilisers actually used their full deflection a couple of times. Not common at all.

The TSS (traffic separation scheme area) threw up the usual gaggle of big guys who looked kind of threatening in the grey gloom and rain:

Despite the volume of them about:

we only had to divert once to go astern of a particularly ugly freighter.

We finally zoomed up the side of the Isle of Wight thanks to a fair tide and crept into the Lymington river in the dark with just enough water under the keel. It is getting pretty shallow in places now and fortunately we did not meet a ferry in the fairway where he would have hogged the deeper bit!

A nice berth in the Yacht Haven awaited us after 13.5 hours underway doing what can only be described as a delivery trip rather than fun. We did get a few dolphins playing with us to brighten things up. The boat worked OK, but the shaft alignment will need to be checked after everything has settled down back in the water as at normal cruise rpm there is more shaft movement than there ought to be.

We happily collapsed, fired up the heating but were too tired to even get excited about food. Just pleased to be afloat again. What next? Well, all the pent up maintenance stuff that we haven't been able to do over the last few weeks awaits. Lovely.