Plymouth, cycles, cranes and fires

Since the weather was still behaving, we dug out the long ignored bikes and headed off. First stop had to be at the rather good coffee stall by the Mayflower steps with the compulsory cannoli too:

We then cycled to Saltram House, a National Trust place:

and after a brief lunch stop, returned via the supermarket. So much easier than dragging the shopping back by hand as we've done whilst Izzy the doglet was with us. 

Our social activities picked up a lot when Simon and Amanda (the man who used to run the yellow peril day boats from the quay in Dartmouth) came for lunch. Then Richard and Kim arrived for a couple of nights in their sparkly new to them yacht JeANNie. We might have tasted a couple of gins with them, had a wander into the city and a rather excellent lunch in the Fishermen's Arms pub. It is just far enough up the hill from the Mayflower steps to help it avoid most tourists which was much appreciated. We of course never class ourselves as tourists - properly deluded folks that we are.

The bike batteries were recharged ready to attack the Plym Trail. An old railway line through the woods to the east of the city that is pretty nicely surfaced. We especially enjoyed the nice gradient as we headed back - around 8 miles with no need to pedal at all. A rare treat - of course, we had earned that heading up the valley in the first place. 

Mayflower marina has quite an eclectic mix of craft ranging from ex-lifeboats, the odd larger powerboat and a very sad looking yacht that let us continue the "old Seagull outboard" theme from Guernsey:

Sitting in the cockpit of that yacht with the engine running would be a lovely noisy and smoky experience. A proper throwback. Mind you it didn't look as though the yacht had moved in a while. The captain was almost tempted to try and rescue the engine for old time's sake. Then he got better.

The following morning, we were highly unamused. There had been a fire in Devonport and the boat was covered in grey / black sticky goo that liked staining the GRP. A big wash off removed some but not from the areas that needed polishing. Our intention of heading off the next morning was parked - instead we opted to stay put and try to clean things up. As it turned out, the weather was breaking. The fantastic sunny stuff was reverting to showers and sunny intervals which didn't help with polishing. However, we did manage to clean up the flybridge which looks way better now. There were a couple of really windy nights and the waves, together with the wash from the very annoying Police boat who likes belting past the moorings for no obvious reason other then he can, caused this:

The two lines were abraded against an elderly and a bit rusty bollard that we needed to tie up to. Then the snatching from the waves and wash did them in.  Not good at all. Bear in mind they are big heavy ropes, 24 mm diameter. 

We concluded our extended Plymouth stay with some serious shopping trips, knowing that further west it would be trickier to find big supermarkets nearby - also because we had some visitors planned. The bikes became shopping baskets, lugging all sorts of stuff back to the boat and giving us some exercise at the same time. During one excursion we rather liked the strap line for this restaurant:

Sorry for the non UK readers, a very "in joke" for people of a certain age over here. We fit that profile only too well.

Maintenance news:

We wanted to launch the RIB so the captain could use it to give the waterline a scrub - several days in Dartmouth, with the boat sitting lower in the water than normal meant some weed was starting to grow around the bow area which took the full sun. Only the crane had other ideas. It lifted by half a metre or so then stopped. Totally. A bit like a child who is "putting its parts on" and refusing to move. You could hear the solenoids in the crane that operate the winch / rotation clicking when the button was pressed but the hydraulic power unit, located in the lazarette, was suspiciously silent. Oh good said the captain, or something like that.

The power pack is a 24v motor running a hydraulic pump. The captain's very wrong assumption was that the solenoid on the electric motor had failed. The really great bit is that the power pack is buried in the furthest spot you can find in the lazarette. Right aft and over to the starboard hull. A proper little corner. To get to it, you have to wriggle around the big enclosure that holds the two inverters. That would be kind of OK but then some nice person in the UK added 2 large air conditioning compressors in the same spot. End result - you can get one arm into the now very small space between the compressors and the inverter housing and the power pack is at the full stretch of the captain's arm. Great. So, after removing everything from the lazarette,  a little piece of wire was used to power the solenoid from the main supply to the pump. It duly worked. Oh. Getting a multimeter onto the green signal wire in the system:

to see if there was  a voltage being applied when the crane controls were operated was fun. Holding the two probes at full stretch in one hand and trying to touch the right terminals prompted some choice words. Sure enough, there was no signal. Was there a break in the wiring that leads down through the supporting tube for the crane and over to the power pack across the underside of the deck in the lazarette? Seemed unlikely as the cable was three core, all the wires ran up to the crane together. However, it does have a swivel thingy that allows the crane to go through a full 360 degrees. Could that be playing up and if so how on earth do you get to it without removing the top of the crane? We retired hurt, to borrow a sporting phrase and instead inflated the little dinghy, cleaned up the plug on the little Tohatsu 2 stroke engine cleared out the storage oil, treated it to fresh fuel and it started on the 4th pull after nearly 3 years of being idle. It even pumped cooling water too. So, we have a dinghy to use in Fowey, Falmouth, Scilly. Just not the RIB which was marooned on the boat deck - better than being stuck in the water or in mid air though.

Having slept on things and had another medicinal gin, we decided to put a temporary solution in place for the crane power pack until a proper investigation of the wiring could take place. We ran a cable from the 24v power supply, through a fuse and a simple push on / push off  switch to the relay and just disconnected the inoperative signal wire:

The temporary cable was long enough to be operated up on the boat deck. The power pack must only be switched on when the crane is actually told to move by the controller so the extra switch has to be up there when you are using the crane. Managing the controller and the switch it will be more of  a juggling act than usual.

That piece of temporary cabling involved more time in the corner of the lazarette, squeezed into the little space from hell, doing things one handed at full stretch. It was a most happy time indeed...... Bad words might possibly have been used. Once or twice.

Kingswear to Plymouth

The lovely spell of weather was continuing and although we were having a good time in the river Dart, we'd decided to move on. The plan was to spend a week or so in Plymouth to allow us to dig out the bikes, raid some bigger shops and do some different walks. The tide times mandated an early but not too early morning start. Then we saw this information about an exercise on oil spill response:

As we were berthed right next to the spot they had chosen, we decided that leaving before 9am would be sensible. So much for a lay-in and lazy morning. Still, it was worth it, we headed off the berth and tucked in behind one of the trip boats that was also heading towards the harbour entrance, enjoying the sun and calm conditions from the flybridge:

It was all very tranquil and enjoyable as we left the river:

even if the crew was being pesky with the phone camera

:

As it was so calm and sunny, we finally had a flybridge trip with an interesting coast to enjoy as well. The weather allowed us to go close in to Start Point which can get pretty bumpy in windy / wind over tide conditions. We just needed to keep a careful eye out for the many pot markers that you get inshore in this area. It was worth it though.

As we were nice and close to the lighthouse, we had to take a picture for the collection:

You can see how flat the sea was. Just perfect motorboat weather really. 

As we passed Prawle Point and the Salcombe entrance, so the quantity of pots ramped up dramatically. We were fairly busy dodging them and the odd yacht that was either drifting along (no wind) or wearing out their little diesel engine.  Much as we used to like Salcombe, the way it has turned into London-on-sea is less than appealing. Some folks that we bumped into in Dartmouth had just left the place and reported it as manically busy on the water, especially the bigger mooring buoys in "The Bag" and the anchorage just north of that. We really didn't want to be part of the reported mayhem so we pressed on towards Plymouth. Not as pretty or rural but plenty to see and do plus the attraction of some proper food shops as well. Totally unlike Salcombe.

As we approached Plymouth, we were slowly being overhauled by this rather lovely craft, Yolanda. The skipper waved as they passed doing around 1.5 knots more than us so a very slow motion kind of thing:

Yolanda became more than a passing "little ship" later on.

We headed into the eastern entrance after giving our wing engine some much needed exercise too. There was a warship inside the breakwater doing some crew transfers with a support vessel - they actually called us to advise of their intentions to turn inside a cardinal buoy in that clipped "we are all frightfully good chaps" accent that so many naval officers seem to have.  We were in water that was way too shallow for them so we were not in their way - again, a very naval thing to do. We were even wished a good watch - we must look like a serious boat.

There were a surprising number of yachts about as we headed round to Mayflower marina where we had booked a slot again. As we rounded the breakwater, we saw that our neighbour was to be Yolanda - good job we waved back in a friendly way and gave their boat a thumbs up when they passed us.

The trip was lovely. Flybridge all the way bar when we had to pop inside to give the wing engine a run. Calm, sunny, happy days. Pretty quick too as we took the tide with us all the way.  One of those trips that makes you realise just how lucky we are to be able to "play boats" when we want to. The evening military parade wasn't bad either:

We had an evening chat with the Yolanda folks, learned that what had looked like a typical Dutch steel boat was in fact American and aluminium, then we just chilled. Great day.

River Dart time

Dartmouth is such a lovely place. A variety of scenery, some lovely old buildings, the steam train over in Kingswear making lots of retro train noises, the paddle steamer on the river etc etc. We happily wandered around the town again, enjoying the rather good weather too. Naturally, as soon as there was a slipway or beach area, the little dog needed to paddle. This time she was hidden behind the crew on the slip leading to the boat float:

In case you are even mildly interested, here is what the boatfloat looks like:

We enjoyed a great day with John and Kath, who own a house overlooking Dart Marina, right on the waterfront. Spectacular views and they were great hosts too, feeding us and the doglet royally. Not having seen them since New Year, there was plenty to catch up on.

The walk to Warfleet Creek, one of Izzy's favourite paddling spots, gives you good views back up the river and you can see how kind the weather was being too:

Once there, the usual stone / ball chasing fun had to be enjoyed by all. Perhaps a little bit more by the 4 legged member of the crew:

We then met up with John and Kath again, this time at the castle, near the entrance to the river. John took the instruction to make Izzy work for her treat most seriously:

which was good, testing the wait command nicely. 

We were very happy pottering about but decided to walk up to the recently rebuilt and gentrified Noss Marina for a couple of reasons. One was that there is a company based there (Spares Marina) who will replace the battery in EPIRBs. For the non boating folks, have a look at EPIRB weblink for more information than you really need on how they work. Suffice to say that ours was now overdue for a battery replacement. Unfortunately, it isn't like popping a couple of AA batteries in a torch. If only it was that simple or cheap. As a pretty critical bit of safety kit, it also gets tested and resealed. The Spares Marine site details what they do as:

The service includes full testing before and after the service where the 406MHz, 121.5MHz and GPS functionality are checked. The batteries, plastic dome and seals are all renewed. The old Battery Expiry Label will be replaced, showing the new Battery Expiry Date (SEPTEMBER 2031).

Hence we needed a specialist to do the work, who had a test environment that allowed them to activate the device without alerting the emergency services at the same time. So the EPIRB was dropped off to be fettled.

Our second reason to walk there was more selfish. We'd been told that the on-site café did great coffee and cake. That intel was so right. Heading back, we had to allow some more slipway paddling time for the doglet - her tail becomes a real weapon when she gets excited, spraying water in all directions as you can see from this video clip:

We learned to stand well back.

The social whirl continued when we met up with Simon and Amanda in town for coffee (bit of a theme building here it seems). They live at the end of Old Mill Creek, just upriver from the town in a wonderful setting - just a shame that nobody built a wider road to access the place. They used to run the little yellow day boat hire business here and before that a canal hire fleet and repair facility on the Shropshire Union canal so they are also steeped in the boating thing. Now retired and having got the hang of being so, we had many stories to share.

On the basis that all good things must come to an end, we realised that the further west we went, the harder it would be to return the doglet to her owner. Our plan was to rent a car in Plymouth and try to meet Anne half way but as her diary was rather busy, she decided to come to us for a couple of nights in Kingswear and then take Izzy home. After a tricky and long drive here for her on a Friday, we got some exercise and had dinner in the very good Floating Bridge pub. Back on board, Anne and Izzy played "spot the ball": 

with a variety of facial expressions. For people of a certain age, this reminded us of the old newspaper spot the ball competitions when you would place a huge cross in ballpoint pen on the page and post it  to some company or other with an entry fee and never see or hear of it again. 

For Anne's full day with us, we managed a huge Dartmouth shop crawl. The woman who told us that she had bought several items of clothing recently and so should get nothing else, then justified her actions as early Xmas shopping, We said nothing and just carried the multitude of bags. One traditional old newsagent come gift shop really was trying their best to dissuade customers with a series of notices running from floor to the top of the entrance door forbidding anything and everything it seemed: 

Dogs were banned three times so we took notice and waited outside as Anne went really big and bought a postcard for her mum. Apparently buying things in the shop was still allowed. Just.

Strange notices were not confined top the card shop, this one amused us more though, in a second-hand book shop with some artistic  items crafted from old decaying volumes:

The brutal honesty was refreshing.

Anne and Izzy duly departed and the boat seemed rather quiet. We decided to amuse ourselves by lugging  two loads of washing to the marina facilities, then dragging the even heavier slightly waterlogged stuff back. We powered up the breaker for the tumble dryer and washer, went to load up the dryer and found that the washing machine which had been dead, suddenly was illuminated. Er?? A self repairing Miele washer? The only thing that made sense was a dodgy door latch - the machine had been sitting idle after it refused to power up and there was a certain odour building inside it we thought. So, the captain had slammed the door shout on the supposed dead machine in frustration to prevent this. When we turned the breaker on, the thing seemed all happy again! Sure enough, we attempted another wash and it worked perfectly. It seems that brute force and frustration can fix things......

In celebration, we took the higher ferry over to Dartmouth, wandered around the town and cove, then did the very touristy thing of sitting watching the antique lower ferry setup as it traversed the river:

If you've never seen it, there is basically a barge type ferry that carries the cars and people, coupled to a tugboat which drags it from the slipway backwards, then spins around and drives it forward to the other bank. Iconic Dartmouth indeed:

Our last fun here was walking back to Noss on Dart (again on a rather hot day) to collect our EPIRB with the new battery fitted and tested:

Not the most exciting device in the world or one that we hope to ever use / need. However, if that day came.... . The lovely folks and Spares Marine and their huge lovely dog were great. So much so that we took pity on them and after our coffee and cake stop in the excellent café there,  we delivered some of the truly splendid carrot cake to Spares Marine as a thank you. It seemed to be appreciated. We also bought a new handheld VHF radio to replace our elderly and decaying one. 

The most painful part of our stay was paying the berthing fees and particularly the extortionate harbour dues. Still, for pole position in a lovely setting, it was worth it.

Maintenance News:

As mentioned above, it was kind of a reverse maintenance this time. The washing machine that had miraculously revived itself after being rather brutally treated was off the "must fix" list. We still think that it and the tumble dryer are due for replacement as they are doing well - 19 years old and heavy use since 2009, Thanks to the lovely weather and our sloth, nothing else of note got done. We are stacking up the jobs now, especially loads of polishing. 

Torquay to Kingswear

A nice calm morning meant it was foggy too. That kind of damp hanging in the air thing that had made the boat superstructure wet and was simply annoying. Not enough to wear wet weather gear for but enough to irritate. Despite that, as planned, we left the berth in Torquay pretty early in the morning to minimise the adverse tide that we would have faced later on. We wriggled out of the berth, headed around the inside of the breakwater and were very happy that our flybridge is well up in the air - a lower boat would not be able to see over the wall and the approach to the entrance would be totally blind. There must be some exciting moments there in high summer.

Once out into the murky stuff, we retired to the pilothouse, avoided the pot markers and had the radar working to help. Izzy seemed most concerned that the captain was not paying attention to all the navigation aids properly, sat on his lap and seemed most interested in the radar image:

Fortunately no warning barks were needed. 

The trip was pretty gloomy to start and end with. Here is how we saw Berry Head when there was a gap in the fog bank:

which is the first headland you pass on the short run south in this image of our track:

Normally we just love the entrance to Dartmouth, motoring between the two castles then seeing the town on the hill open up as you venture further into the river. This time, it was not quite as impressive:

but the fog had cleared enough for us to retire to the flybridge and pretend that it was all sunny and lovely:

The mooring gods were shining on us though, even if the sun was not. The nice man (Tony) at Darthaven Marina said that despite the fog, a couple of boats had moved from their little visitor area and that we could back into "pole position". We were rather happy about that. The fog slowly got burned off, the weather improved, the temperature was back to expectations and we took the little foot passenger ferry over to the town, getting a good view of the boat in her temporary home:

We had a rather nice Dale Nelson motorboat astern of us too although the crew were rather "standoffish". We were not wearing the regulation salmon pink trousers perhaps?

If you compare this image with earlier pictures of the boat, you can see how much lower were floating after a fuel top up. For the non boating folks - see how much / little green Coppercoat is showing above the water.

Maintenance news:

Nothing to report, sorry to disappoint you folks who love diesel and oil and coolant and spanners and skin off the knuckles stuff.

Torbay

As we'd not been to Torquay for ages and ages (more than the entire lifetime of the 10 year old doglet), we wondered what had changed. Well, like many seaside town places there were a fair few sad empty shops (we had also seen several in St Peter Port which was a surprise). The general air of a coach tour holiday place remained though, with all that is good and bad about it. In the marina we saw that one swan had decided to take up residence on a floating dock originally planned for a RIB:

 

and had left it suitably poo infested too. Wonder how much per metre per year he / she gets charged by MDL? The town still has some serious quality shopping opportunities. This kind of LGBTQ+ shop offered an interesting lines in personalised fans:

We were not tempted inside and no, that isn't because they were not dog friendly. 

One of the night dockmasters told us that the SW coastal path was a nice walk and that it led to a suitable spot for ball throwing to amuse the doglet and a rather good lunchtime stop, He was right in all aspects except he hadn't mentioned the number of steps uphill that were involved on a hot day. However, it was well worth it, we had a rather good lunchtime with a rather excellent "curried quiche" and salad followed by equally good cake. Have a look at Mr and Mrs Jones Deli weblink to explore the rather quirky place:

After the walk and more than adequate lunch, we relented and got the bus back to town. 

Finding Izzy friendly beaches was trickier than in Guernsey. One shingle strewn offering  nearby and a second a good walk away, around Torbay. Of course, we visited both and on the way back did the tourist thing, sitting outside a beach café for refreshment. Their coffee looked like it was going to come from a Nescafe jar so we avoided that. Nice view from the table though:

We had forgotten how nice the bay area is, if you can kind of ignore the "kiss me quick hats" horror of  Paignton and the rather run down bits of Torquay. All very UK seaside holiday town like.

A must visit for us is Totnes so we headed over by bus, walked down the river Dart and Izzy had a great time paddling in a stream, chasing stones and generally living a dog's life as in this video:

 

We also visited Brixham on the way back, for yet another beach and stone / ball chasing time and a refreshing ice-cream for the humans. It was busy, way busier than Torquay seemed to be and justifiably so - there is something way more authentic about Brixham with the working fishing port area. 

Our last day there was a bit more like hard labour. We'd used the marina washing machine thanks to our dead one, dragged back the laundry to our working tumble dryer and then gave the neglected boat a serious wash off. We are amazed how a little dog that loves paddling, ducking her head under the water to retrieve stones and generally splashing about is unimpressed when she gets some water on her from the hose. 

We planned to head around to Dartmouth but finding a place to stop there is tricky for us. Dart marina never has any visitor space that they can confirm in advance and often say "no chance". A shame as they are TransEurope members so we get a discounted deal there! Our preference is the harbour authority mid-river pontoon but we not allowed there now - apparently we have suddenly become too big despite many years of using the facility. The lovely visitor buoys at beautiful Dittisham that are big enough for us have shrunk in number to only 1 and the harbour folks let little yachts go on it even when there are plenty of smaller mooring buoys nearby empty. Not great. The only harbour authority option would be to see if there was space to be strung between two mid-river buoys just off the town. We tried Noss marina who said they were full. We tried Darthaven in Kingswear who said the same but suggested we call early on the day of our planned arrival in case things had changed. They have a dedicated visitor berthing area but that was full and it is "first come first served". We love Dartmouth but it is a tricky place to visit unless you anchor and then they expect you to be on board for each change in direction of the tide to make sure that anchor has reset OK.

We decided we would head off the next morning, when our 5 day MDL deal expired, in optimistic mode.

Maintenance News:

The main engine was treated to around 100ml of coolant. The level seemed to have dropped a bit - that might have been imagination of course. Perfectly possible though that the remaining tiny air bubbles from the coolant change we had performed had finally all arrived in the surge tank. We will see if the captain has overfilled it and the big Lugger decides to spit some out on our next trip.

St Peter Port to Torquay

As there was a nice calmiish day forecast and the doglet likes calm trips as does the crew, we decided to head back to the English south coast. They predicted that the wind would drop and the sea state with it during the day. Departure was just before 6am and that was good timing as several commercial vessels were leaving shortly afterwards and the harbour entrance gets closed during their movements.

Plenty of following tide raced us up the Little Russel channel along the eastern side of Guernsey. Then we let the east going tide take us as it wished, having calculated that we would get roughly the same shove west when it turned around lunchtime. It was grey and overcast so no nice pictures to share. When we got to the Traffic Separation Zone, it was a bit busy as you can see from this plotter image:

Luckily we managed to thread through the gap between the two clumps of ships, avoiding them all without a course diversion by increasing speed a little for one big guy that we otherwise would have been on a collision course with. You can see how we were carried east, then crossing the shipping lanes at right angles, then letting the tide take us west:

On the way, we so enjoyed a thick fogbank as we crossed the shipping lanes. We only "saw" the big guys on the AIS plot and by radar. So, again, no pictures. However, it cleared as we approached the English coast and some dolphins came to play. Izzy was beside herself with excitement, being held so she could watch them perform their tricks in our bow wave:

We then retired to the flybridge as it was getting warmer and, of course, Izzy was convinced that there had to be more out there to watch and enjoy. She was on alert and scanning the bow area for ages:

As we approached Torquay we saw plenty of activity. Trip boats trundling around inside the harbour, one waiting outside, yachts doing lots of funny manoeuvres in the entrance etc etc. We were heading into the "posh" MDL marina there. Yes, we are most unimpressed with MDL corporate and the way they run Hythe Marina where our house is. We normally refuse to give them any business anywhere as they would not give us the expected number of free 12 metre visitor nights that come with the berth outside our house. However, during the winter they had a fire sale going on. You could buy 5 nights berthing for £110. Er? One night here at the ludicrous MDL visitor rates would cost us around £104!

We were given a finger berth that was fun to slot into:

and we happily settled down for the evening after giving the dog some much needed exercise. The flybridge view of the town looked pretty drab in the overcast conditions:

but our mood was rather good because of the nice calm crossing, the cheap berthing and the friendly marina folks who didn't want to impose the usual MDL punitive charge for plugging into the power. It always amazes us how the marina staff in their various locations are so good when working for such a tricky organisation. 

The main reason for coming here is that we've not visited for ages - certainly not since we stopped working 12 years ago, so a chance to explore Torbay a bit was tempting.

The trip over took around 11.5 hours and the boat behaved well, despite being over 4 tons heavier then when we went the other way. No maintenance stuff to report at all, no spanners or big hammers were needed. By the way, we had been good and completed the on-line customs / border control reporting that is needed when you return from the Channel Islands. We also flew the compulsory yellow flag as we entered UK waters, which you are not supposed to remove until the authorities have said you can. I fear that ours will be very shabby after a winter left outside. We've never ever in all the years we have been boating received any approval or feedback bar automated messages. Great system.

Island life, fuel and beaches

Well, when you are on a lovely island with loads of dog friendly beaches, what do you do? First of all you try to explain to the doglet that tides make a difference. The beach at Havelet Bay, one of Izzy's favourites, vanishes at high water. Despite that she insists on dragging us all the way down the slipway so she can look over the edge, see deep water all around and then turn to us with an accusing "what have you done with my beach" look:

She struggles with the concept a lot. Luckily a few hours later, normal service can be restored and the crew can be forced to throw a ball for her:

We had some nice walks, hours of beach time for the dog, a great lunch in a local pub and a couple of super coffee breaks in Coco - handily positioned next to the Havelet beach so Izzy could dry off a bit and drop some of the accumulated sand on their floor, not ours. Well worth the cost of a couple of flat whites. Continuing the food theme, we had to visit Anni's terrace at Moores hotel for the famous Apfelstrudel.  It would be so wrong not to test it out. Happily we can report that it is as good as ever, despite the sad passing of Anni herself a couple of years ago.

It was not all gastronomy though. We tortured the doglet by taking her to Pets at Home for claw clipping, pad fur removal and an attempt to remove the fur from inside her ears which was wildly knotted. Poor girl. She forgave us pretty quickly though. We then took her by bus to St Sampson so we could raid the rather good M and G chandlery. It was too hot for little dogs and humans to walk the rest of the way there and back.

The little beach come mooring area on the other side of the harbour had a few strange resident craft. This twin outboard powered dinghy amused the captain no end:

Two elderly British Seagull outboards that brought back memories. Many many moons ago, you could hire one to go with your dinghy when renting a cruiser or yacht on the Norfolk Broads. The captain had the fun of showing the hirers how to use them as part of the handover and trial run. Explaining to a rather "well to do" chap. who arrived in a rather lovely Inspector Morse style Jaguar, that the infernal beast of a 2 stroke outboard ran on a 10:1 fuel to oil ratio and so would smoke a bit (!) was bad enough. Showing him how to flood the carburettor until fuel was running out of it into the river to get it started when cold was tricky. Then letting him see the evil notch on the flywheel whizz round all ready to take the skin or fingers off your hand if you were not careful was the icing on the cake. 

The clouds of blue smoke and distinctive noise then became a minor issue,  As did the 1.5HP trying to push a loaded dinghy against the stream in the river when it was in full flow. How some hirers ever managed to start the things was a mystery. For a demonstration of the noble art of Seagull operation, see this video link You Tube Seagull start-up

We needed to top up with fuel so we contacted the nice Rubis folks and arranged a time slot around high water to meet Gary the tanker driver in St Sampson. As we headed off to rendezvous there, we admired the folks paying well over 15% more for the benefit of using the Boatworks fuelling facility in St Peter Port. OK for the yacht taking on tiny amounts but for anything >300 litres, Rubis wins hands down:

The huge (20 minutes) trip there and back looks like this:

The big looped approach to St Sampson is because there are all sort of nasty rocky bits and swirling currents around there. Since it was neap tide time, and the harbour pontoon we use for fuel dries out, we only had just over a metre and  a half under our keel when we berthed, an hour before high water. Fuelling took the best part of an hour including adding some Stanadyne additive to help preserve the fuel and we sneaked out with not much more clearance. Well worth it though.

As it was a baking hot day, we then chilled on board until early evening when the dog had a run on Havelet beach again. Only the tide was well out and there was an abundance of weed laying on the compacted sand. A couple of people had driven down the slipway, onto the beach and launched their small boats from a trailer. The trailer gives you an idea of how much weed was around:

as does the front of this van:

Particularly amusing was the way that weed was poking out of all the holes in the front wheels too:

One of the tow tricks was an elderly Nissan Navara. They were renowned for having failed chassis legs due to corrosion. A bath in salt water and a coating of seaweed cannot be helping this one much. The weed didn't bother Izzy much, she was so happy to be back paddling again. Or digging:

.

or both.

On the same slipway as the twin Seagull powered dinghy, was this strange landing craft:

Sad cases. who have read and remembered all of our blog posts, might recall this as the work barge for the Guernsey Oysters business. To see the beds on Herm where they grow, look at this video link Oyster farming on channel 5. We seem to remember that the work barge had a famous background too. If you look closely at the side of the barge, you will see several small plates welded onto it. They are to cover up ports that oars were shipped though as this barge was made for a film and was mocked up as a rowing craft, Strange to meet a film star on this particular little stony beach.

Although the weather was good (sunny, warm / hot) the harbour continued to be a bit quiet:

Hopefully you can spot the Nordhavn on the far pontoon. 

Maintenance News:

Well, sometimes life is just like that. We were smugly enjoying the rather wonderful new battery capacity that we have one lunchtime when we decided to fire up the genset - not really to charge them but to run the oven . Since we will have plenty of AC power from the genset (52 amps) we also decided to do some washing, only the washing machine had other ideas. Having worked happily a few days beforehand, it just would not fire up. No light, no nothing. So, we emptied the cupboard from hell that is behind the washer and the dryer, removed the rear panel and got access to the power sockets. Of course, the fuse in the plug was fine. As was the power to the socket itself. 

Everything pointed to a failed board inside the machine - as it is now elderly and has been heavily used since 2009, we guess that we cannot complain too much. Is it worth trying to fix an 18 year old Miele washing machine, even if you can get the parts? We reckoned not. Lots of fun to come sourcing and fitting a replacement. In the meantime we will have to join all the other folks who use marina laundry facilities, and bring stuff back to the tumble dryer which still works. Mind you, removing the panel was a bit of a shock.....

You get to see the rather boring  back of the tumble dryer:

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and that was very messy indeed, loads of fluff around. It looked like the exhaust hose was not sealing properly at the bottom - some nice factory person had put loads of sealing goo around it but that wasn't doing the job either. So, a massive clean up was needed. The flexible pipe was removed from the three little plastic clips that are supposed to seal it in position, a ton of fluff removed from inside the cabinetry and the hose refitted with a couple of cable ties to hold it more securely. It was tempting to break off the three plastic clips and use a huge jubilee clip around it but the ridged hose would not have been that simple to anchor in place. Here is a slightly cleaned up and refitted hose:

and you can see the remaining grot in there. Cleaning out took ages, kneeling in the locker and working through the hatch. At least we found another problem and could try to fix it.

Below this lives the errant washing machine. Plenty of fluff had found its way down behind that too so when we get  to remove the  dead device, it might be very very messy indeed. The question is - will the hoses be long enough to allow the machine to be wrestled out forwards? If not then the whole job is going to  be a real PITA. It will have to wait until we are back at base and have time / help to check it out. Grr.