All Bangored out

The weather continued to enjoy upsetting us. Every day was wildy windy. The boat seemed to be pinned to the pontoon with four fenders upsetting the nice polish that we had given her before leaving Penarth. When we were allocated our berth, we thought "oh good, this is one where the prevailing winds will blow us off, not onto the pontoon". How wrong we were. The unseasonal strong NWly stuff just kept us firmly in place.

We were in no rush to leave, endure a rough North Channel (the bit between Ireland and Scotland) and then get lifted out to lay under the boat being rain and wind blasted. So, we continued to enjoy Norn Iron. What composed enjoy? Well, a round of joining folks for coffee and excellent scones, entertaining people for dinner and being entertained, being taken out to explore more widely and generally enjoying a hedonistic lifestyle. 

One touristy thing we have always avoided was visiting the Titanic exhibition in Belfast, at the head of the slipway where the ship was built:.

We thought it would be another one of those "making money from the disaster" things until a local tour guide who lives on a boat in the marina told us that it was well worth a visit. Lots of social and industrial history of Belfast, some good exhibits and a well put together experience. So, we took the train there and were very happily surprised by how good it was. Almost worth the entrance fee.

Afterwards, we re-visited the lovely Dock cafe in the Abercorn basin area. It serves coffee and homemade cake on an honesty basis - you consume what you want and then leave however much money you think it is worth. Run by some lovely people, the scary bit was when one of them remembered us from a visit that we made with John and Tina back in 2014. Either we are wonderfully memorable for all the wrong reasons or the lady just likes being nice to visitors to try to up their donation. No matter what the reason, it is still a must go to place.

Wandering around Bangor the local sense of humour continued in the shop signs:

and we had the very pleasant experience of bumping into Steve and Jane, the crew of Florence who arrived in Bangor. Florence is a rather lovely Oyster yacht, another bertholder from Penarth. Wales was moving north. Just slowly.

We finally saw a break in the forecast suggesting that the endless days of high winds were coming to an end. So, we called Troon Yacht Haven, arranged a lift out and a couple of nights' visitor berthing beforehand. All good. Then they called us back saying that the yard team were worried that the strops on their boat hoist would not be long enough for a tall lardy thing like our Nordhavn. Actually they didn't say lardy, they were very polite. So, several images of the boat in slings were provided and they decided they could not lift us. Instead, we organised to get dragged out in Largs. Not as convenient as in Troon you can walk to the shops. Also a ladder was available there, belonging to friends, which we could borrow. So a hired ladder was ordered for delivery to Largs. The madness of health and safety / getting sued these days means folks will not loan ladders any more. Wonderful.

Maintenance news:

Because the weather finally looked like letting us go boating, the captain fired up the electronics to figure out departure times and to check that the autopilot was still behaving. So glad that we tested it. The autopilot tried to boot up, briefly displayed a follow-up lever screen, then died. It did that again. Oh wonderful. Our guess was that it was the flybridge lever that was causing the problem once more. This one had misbehaved in the past. So, the captain had the fun of getting into the locker under the instruments, disconnecting the lever and then the pleasure of finding that without it the autopilot system worked just fine.

This is what they look like:

The silicone sealant it was bedded on with didn't want to release and needed lots of persuasion and a few choice words. Finally removed, the wiring was unscrewed:

and a spare unit we had fitted instead. All then worked as planned.  Glad we got to the bottom of the earlier issues we'd seen when leaving Penarth.