Happily Bangoring

We quickly settled into life here. The friendly local folk and lifestyle helped. Visits from people we know here, invites to dinner and, amazingly, the loan of a little van for the captain to use whilst the owner was off to the Isle of Man to watch the TT racing. Bear in mind that we had only met the owner for one evening before the offer of transport was made.

After our lovely trip up the Irish sea and arrival in calm sunny conditions, things went downhill rather dramatically:

and that translated into some nice strong wind gusts:

from a bad direction. It was a bit wild, we had removed the bimini cover, added more fenders and watched little waves come through the harbour entrance and manage to make the right angle turn towards us. Lovely. 

Eventually the wind cleared up, just having deposited plenty of salt on the boat again which needs to be washed off. We "did" the town and supermarket, our walk coinciding with a march by several Orange Lodges. For the readers not familiar with these, look at this Wikipedia entry. The bands were impressive as always and some of the guys playing the huge Lambeg drums were equally large, sweaty and scary, (The Lambeg drum is supposed to be the loudest in the world and we can well believe that)

And some video so you get to hear the music as well:

There were many lodges taking part so the town was wildly busy.

We took the train to Belfast for a wander around the famous St George's market, walked around Belfast Lough and the local parks. All most civilised really. Then the crew flew back to Southampton as Mr Toddler had a heart operation booked. She did the chauffeur service to and from what was an amazingly successful procedure whilst the captain was "third home alone". He amused himself with shopping, invites to dinner and a boat trip along the lough, a visit to the Ulster transport museum and generally pottering around.

Bangor then became a little bit like Penarth when Malaspina, the other Nordhavn 47 that had over-wintered in Penarth arrived with Martin and Inge on board and berthed alongside us:

Once more, half the UK population was in one place:

We guess that as the boats are pretty unusual, we got a mention in Bangor Marina's Facebook page:

Nice to know that we are a stunning boat!

After joining Martin and Inge for a curry in town, the captain collected the returning crew from the airport and normal service on board was resumed. So normal that the following day involved more coffee and raspberry and white chocolate scones:

  

Unfortunately Martin and Inge had already departed and missed out on the badness.

Maintenance news:

We noticed that the main bilge pump was "short cycling" - turning on and off very quickly where normally it switches on, then runs for longer until the deep bilge area is pretty dry. The Ultra switch was removed and cleaned out, a really nice job of course. Here is the switch with the float and bottom plate removed::

After cleaning it seemed to behave for a little while but then reverted to short cycling, Another clean and it decided to just run permanently, no matter how much water was or was not in the bilge area. Removed once more and tested it was clear that the electrical bits had failed so it needed replacement. The challenge is that a 24 volt version of it is not easily or readily available in the UK. So, as a shorter term fix, we sourced a little Whale sensor from the local chandlery. Apparently early versions of these were horribly unreliable but on good authority, the newer ones are OK - the good authority being that Whale have their factory and offices here in Bangor.

Naturally, the wiring for this little guy was different and so needed modification:

and fitting it into the place previously occupied by the Ultra switch was tricky. A highly amusing little job over several days.

One of our two fresh water pumps had failed and so that got changed out for a spare. We have two permanently plumbed and wired in so swapping over if needed is simple. No fresh water on board is not good, especially for flushing  the heads.

Oh, and the remote for the TV / radio amplifier needed new batteries. If only all fixes were that simple and cheap. We even had the spare batteries on board.