The lift out fun

In the midst of the entertainment system refit, we had booked a lift out. The yard in Swanwick has a nice chunky 65 ton lift and the guys did a good job carefully positioning the strops and getting her airbourne:

After the winter in Penarth with brackish water, and a few weeks in salty stuff again, the boat had been through a bit of self cleaning and so pressure washing her was not too difficult:

The normal fun of cleaning up the stern gear, coolers, thruster props and anode replacement was aided by Martin (we were staying with them whilst the boat was high and dry) and Anne who decided to pose in her boiler suit and sunglasses whilst manhandling a prop:

We managed to get everything done pretty quickly thanks to some OK weather and the help. Unfortunately, the tides dictated an early 7am relaunch on the Friday so we had a nasty alarm call to get us to the marina and to prepare the boat for the splash. Here is the view from the pilothouse as the travel hoist approached:

and soon she was heading for the water again:

A satisfying but tiring week. We were very happy to be afloat albeit in a very grubby boat.

The other good news was that Paul, the Maricom man, announced that the had found why the Satellite compass might have been misbehaving in bumpy weather. He prefaced it with "you might want ot kill me or love me".  He  then 'fessed up  to having set a parameter wrongly after the battery change which defines the orientation of the control box and hence the rate sensor devices in it that measure rotation. He reset it and time will now tell.We decided not to kill him despite the nasty awakenings doing rough overnight trips and the incessant beeping during the run from Penarth down the north Devon coast earlier this year. It was hard to resist the temptation but he needed to finish off the TV and router work first anyway.... 

This was the tricky diagram that he misinterpreted - apparently we are a "D" installation:

or at least we are set that way now.