HUGE Nordhavns, doglets and having fun

A little trip to Eastbourne was on the cards for the captain after he rebuilt and resealed the manual grey water pump from Lady Grey, the HUGE Nordhavn 55 owned by Alex and Gisele. We may have mentioned how large the 55 is before but it is worth repeating that compared to our 47 the 55 is way bigger.. 

The pump was refitted and a truly disgusting amount of goo was cleaned out from the tank itself involving our large wet and dry vacuum, copious quantities of Bio Blast to help break down / eat up the stuff and plenty of patience. It was quite satisfying to see a clean bottom to the tank once we finished. Alex celebrated by showing off the new ensign he had purchased for the boat:

Maybe we should call her a small ship instead though. Some prior owner had bastardised the grey water tank sender setup - probably because the original automatic float switch had packed up. So, to put everything back to "as built" a new sender assembly was ordered to pop in once it arrives. Amusingly, the nice folks at Leesan called to query the order. "Are you sure that you need probes that long? What depth is the tank?" When the captain explained that it was for a Nordhavn the guy understood at once - "oh yes, they have very big and very deep tanks". We know, we cleaned it out!

On the way back to Penarth, we had the pleasure of a lunch with Anne who brought along Izzy our goddog and the rather lovely if rather bigger Paddy too:

We then dognapped Izzy, ready for a 5 week stay with us. Naturally things then had to be arranged that were all focussed on the doglet and what she would like. A muddy walk in the country park at Barry, time on Barrybados beach and then a week in Blue Anchor bay in Somerset followed. #spoileddogletindeed

She seemed to expect such treatment though, with a quite imperious look:

The Somerset rental place had great views out to sea and over the fields:

and nearby Minehead had a proliferation of "old scrap metal art". You can guess where this one was positioned:

A lovely covid lockdown story - see BBC report. We enjoyed an excellent lunch at Woods in Dulverton (nice little place) and a good wander around Porlock Weir too:

In the local pub we discovered that the local mermaids seemed to be rather friendly:

but none were visible in the harbour - probably because it was low tide during our visit. 

A good forest walk around Dunster and up to the viewpoint tested the crew's back and it managed the challenge well - smiles not grimaces were apparent:

Once we reached the top, passing old Roman settlements and earthworks, Izzy did her "I am in charge" thing again:

More walks were enjoyed at Lynmouth:

and up the river which gave an impressive and slightly noisy backdrop:

After Anne left us, we felt obliged to revisit the beach to give the doglet a last runaround and ball fun before the drive back to the boat:

All in all a great week in an area that we didn't know at all but fully intend to revisit sometime.

Maintenance news

Neil, a Nordhavn 40 owner, has been very industrious and designed a replacement for the pesky Chi Tai DC panel meters that are installed on most Nordhavns. The meters fail over time and can get very hot, to the extent that some components melt with all the risks that brings. Instead of a circuit board full of old style components, Neil has a much smarter solution that uses chips and some logic to do the same job whilst consuming way less power too. We were lucky enough to get some of his first batch of completed boards and so the captain had a happy time swapping out the 6 DC meters on our boat that measure the 24v and 12v system consumption, alternator charging and battery voltage. Here is a comparison of the original and new boards:

and yes, you can see some heat discolouration on the original. Neil will be offering these to other owners in the future - if you have the Chi Tai originals installed, just replace them. It is a no brainer. There will be a similar solution for the 240v AC gauges sometime and we will be replacing those too. 

A very satisfying little job indeed although all you see are the new displays which look identical to the originals.