Huge ocean voyage then some maintenance

We awoke pretty early and were delighted to sense that the weather forecast was right. The 30 knot gusts had died down. The decision to escape Portavadie Marina and head over to Tarbert pretty much straight away was an easy one, before the promised force 7's again - then we found that it was nearly low water which restricted our turning space even more. Needs must and all that so some bow thruster action was needed to encourage the bow around and through the wind. The visitor pontoon area there is really pretty horrid to access / escape from in blowy conditions. Not a lot of room to turn a boat of our size when alongside the north of the long walkway:

and a slalom around the end of it / some buoys marking where stones have fallen into the marina from the bank. They could just get them removed...

After the monster run over to Tarbert, arriving before the office was open, we sneaked onto a hammerhead we had used before as the one we had been allocated was busy. Once the office reopened we checked that a week there would be possible with a very helpful friendly young lady. She felt the urge to check with the one "less helpful" harbour person. We have to report that he had an English accent too. Very polite and well spoken but clearly we were a nuisance for some unfathomable reason. The girl said that our hammerhead was free for ages into the future (booking sheets were empty!) The chap was about to say that he wanted to move us so we went for the presumptive close approach with "great, we will stay there then". Man looked crestfallen but tried to unsettle us with "it is the traditional boat festival weekend coming up you know and so you might have someone rafting on you". Another sad look when we said fine. We had seen the weather forecasts, no way was the harbour going to be that busy!  Then "you will need to be at one end of the pontoon so we can put someone else in there next to you". Delightedly we told him that we already were. He retired to the back office having failed in his mission to spread misery.

Such a shame, everyone else was very welcoming, helpful and happy to have us in their beautiful harbour area. When we check out we will ask him what we did to upset him (apart from exist perhaps?)

Maintenance news:

For some unfathomable reason, the captain decided to treat the main engine to a new multi-V drive belt. The one that operates the water pump and domestic alternator. The "v's" were starting to look less pronounced and as the belt was 6 years old and had done 1900 hours, it felt like time (there is no fixed schedule recommended in the manuals or by Lugger Bob the engine guru / technical trainer)

Because of the installation with a coolant hose running across the front of the engine, this is tricky. You can remove one belt guard, loosen off the other two and pop off the belt from the small alternator:

You can see the offending coolant hose in the picture above. Draining the coolant and removing the hose is way too complex / time consuming. So, then you have to feed the new Multi-V through the remaining bottom cover which just needs some patience. We like getting the new one in place before removing the old belt just in case... You never know. Here is the new belt waiting to be swapped over:

The crew had her spinach and manfully (womanfully?) used a long bar to pull the tensioner back and let the captain feed the old belt out of and then the new one into position.

Should be good for a few more hours now.