and then it all went rather wrong

Having sorted out a few bits of pre-departure maintenance, taken the bikes for a few excursions and generally stocked up on food we had to park the car for the summer (assuming that we get one for a change of course). So, we drove back to Hythe, dropped the car into store in the New Forest and then took the "interesting" train trip back to Penarth. Well, if you want to be pedantic, Cogan station, as that is the closest.

Walking back to the boat we popped into the local Tesco store where we had a call from Mr Toddler to say that Mrs Toddler was not well. This ended up with an ambulance and trip to Southampton General. If you read our last post, you will see that there is a theme building here. Not a particularly good one though. So, the following day the crew did that train journey in reverse to help out. This meant that Mr Toddler didn't need to live on cereals and boiled egg once the stuff in the fridge that had already been prepared had run out. 

The captain stayed on board, doing a few odd jobs and getting plenty of exercise on the bike / walking / dragging stuff back from the supermarket. He was waiting to see if it would help if he also went to Hythe or if he was more (not much in reality) use staying on the boat.

There was an awesome weather window for the trip around Land's End to Falmouth over the upcoming weekend which you could only dream of - sunny and incredibly calm:

 

Yes, blue is good and that image shows the forecast wave heights. Less than a meter at the time we would be heading around - amazing. 

Mrs Toddler was collected from the hospital by the crew, she returned armed with antibiotics. The crew had a train back booked for the Saturday so things were looking good, we could use the amazing weather window. Then Mrs T reacted to the antibiotics in quite a dramatic and unpleasant way and rapidly had to go back into hospital again, fortunately just overnight, but it meant everything got delayed.

The captain had company locally - Alun and Julie our boat neighbours took pity on him, abandoned and alone, as did other folks we know in the area. He fed himself, remembered to clean up afterwards and do a bit of washing too. Wild wild time. The perfect weather window went by with a gentle "see you never again" noise.

Of course, when the crew finally returned by train she hit the magical line closure to shore up an embankment which diverted the Portsmouth to Cardiff train around Southampton. No direct service for her:

Then it got even better, as well as the extra change needed there had been a broken down train on the line near Trowbridge which meant lots of trains were cancelled or horribly late. Luckily, hers was the one that ran and was on time - before and after were a sea of cancellations. Wonderful journey after a seriously stressful week. 

We had a chilled night back afloat but as the weather had gone to rats and we were back into windy / wet days, we got up early before the rain started and took the boat for the traditional run around the bay to make sure that all was working well after the captain had been tinkering with valve clearances etc. The usual strange track ensued:

The good news was that it worked OK - bar the remote control for the thrusters which needed a new battery. Our built in navigation PC sounds like an elderly hamster wheel when it boots up now - death cannot be far away. The 24v Vasari PC devices have proven to be rather less reliable than their price tag would suggest. The following day, we washed off the grey gritty stuff that prior rain showers had deposited all over the boat but there was no sensible weather window to head off:

Compare this image to the earlier one and yes, red is very bad, purple is grim too for a 27 hour voyage. So, being feeble, we stayed put. 5 metre waves around Land's End were not tempting us out from our cosy berth.

That allowed more exercise / shopping by bike (still very impressed with them), a nice lunch with Simon and Nikki and meant we could go to the Marina's bacon roll and hot cross bun thingy on Good Friday. The catering and organisation by the new restaurant operation in the marina (now known as "Goose on the Loose") left a lot to be desired. We fear that this new incarnation of the building and restaurant will fail too. Sad, we hope to be proved wrong.

It looked like there was a little (very little) weather window over the Easter weekend for our planned trip so we kept a close eye on the forecasts, trying to ignore the fact that it would be pouring with rain if we locked out on Easter Saturday morning. So tempting.

Maintenance news:

The forecabin headlining replacement had one job left - getting a couple of trim rings made to fix around the circular portholes. Two were cut from stainless steel for us and fitted. The steering system had a bit more pressure put into it and we went big and treated the thruster remote to the new battery that it craved.