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:

.

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.

Portland to Guernsey

After many days of particularly windy weather, it was so nice to see a forecast like this one:

It had to be time to head over to Guernsey. Actually time was the challenge- the tides were all wrong for a daytime passage and not great for an overnight one either. To optimise the tides, we would arrive in St Peter Port after midnight - not ideal as the Little Russel channel is usually plagued with poorly marked pots and the little markers get dragged underwater in the strong streams. So, we decided to make the best of a daylight trip and accept that we would be pushing the tide more than necessary, adding around 45 minutes to the trip and a few litres of fuel. So be it.

We headed off on a beautiful sunny morning at around 6am. This was the view towards the Eastern ship channel exit from Portland harbour, with the blind partially down to shelter the helmsperson's eyes from the sun:

We headed down the side of Portland with plenty of tidal help, avoiding pot markers and consuming an early breakfast underway. Here is the pilothouse view of the (in)famous Bill of Portland:

and now from a little closer and a little blurry perhaps with a zoom lens:

Just not too close.

It had been a nice calm trip to the Bill, once out of the shelter of the land, the remaining Atlantic swell and the wind induced waves made the sea a bit "sloppy" - very typical for the channel crossing. The waves were only around a meter high but in a confused pattern so the stabilisers were in action to keep the crew and doglet happy

The planned route over involved letting the tide take us to the west initially, then back east to a point just off the shipping traffic separation zone to the north of Alderney as we headed more or less south. From our course, you can see that it almost worked. We had to make a couple of fairly big diversions around commercial shipping - the big kinks in the track below until we reached the shipping lanes - the straight bit:

Here is one of the guys that forced us to head too far east initially:

Only a little container feeder ship but still not worth arguing with!

As we approached the separation zone the usual gaggle of ships ploughing along the lanes appeared:

together with several French fishing boats who seem able to ignore the rules of the road and cross the shipping lanes at strange angles, not 90 degrees. No matter, it was a lovely day and the crew and 2nd crew member were enjoying the sun and air whilst the captain  looked on from the pilothouse:

Once clear of the shipping lanes (only one small diversion needed there) we decamped to the flybridge enjoying the lovely weather and giving the plotter up there more to do than it usually has:

As we approached Guernsey, the 2nd crew member was on sharp lookout:

probably trying to see the very tempting beaches. As we closed on the entrance to St Peter Port harbour, we realised that our liner curse was in full flow again, this was anchored off:

Luckily arriving late afternoon meant that the liner passengers were being taken back on board - we passed the pilot boat heading out to the liner as we entered the harbour. Result! We were met by the every friendly Jason, the harbour guy in his dory and as all the walk-ashore pontoons in the outer harbour were busy, we were directed to the one "unconnected" pontoon, known as Swan 5. No swans though. That meant we had to uncover and free the RIB, launch it and then take Izzy a whole 20 metres or so to the connected bits so she could have a run ashore. 

Directly opposite us was a truly enormous Nordhavn, Mermaid Six. Friendly folks on board but we could only briefly chat to them from the RIB as they were heading off the next morning. Actually that worked well for us as we could then move into their spot on the walk ashore pontoon:

The harbour was not terribly busy for the time of year. Maybe because they have jacked up the berthing prices considerably, especially as the facilities are, to be kind, sparse. According to the rather unhappy harbour staff, this was to help cover the huge deficit that the airport and the Island's airline Aurigny run up. A drop in the ocean I would imagine and a drop that causes a significant drop in visitor numbers too perhaps. Apparently many folks are just mooring overnight now, using the lovely island as purely a staging post to France. Quite a waste really.

We had a large yacht as our neighbour:

who also headed ashore in their RIB - a big Caribe with a huge outboard, We felt sorry for the davits that had to lift it, fitted on the stern of the yacht.

The harbour was suitably tranquil that evening:

It felt good to be here again even if we were a little tired. The RIB was left in the water ready for Izzy's early morning pump out trip and we slept rather well. The passage took around 11.5 hours berth to berth, longer than it should as we had to fight the tide more than you would wish to, in order to have a daylight passage. As there is no maintenance news to report, we will end things here.

Chilling (apart from the outboard) in Portland

As the little dog likes trundling around in the RIB, we decided to indulge her. We launched it, fired up the outboard, left it running for a while to check all was well (it hadn't been used since we left Penarth) and then headed off. Izzy was in her normal spot - sitting up front with paws perched on the steering wheel looking very much in charge. We planned to just potter around the marina area as it was very windy so going outside the breakwater would have meant plenty of spray - as it was the wind was making some waves splash against the walkway pontoon and causing spray to be thrown up there.

We headed off and after 50 metres or so, the engine coughed and stopped. It steadfastly refused to restart too, so the oars were quickly unshipped and the captain had the unenviable task of rowing back into the wind towards the boat. Luckily for us, a little fishing boat was returning from checking their Oyster beds and kindly gave us a tow to the pontoon. Grr

The captain had been a good boy and religiously run the carburettor and filter dry after each use - the wonderful ethanol mixed in now just helps the petrol degrade even faster and gum up the fuel system inside the outboard. It looked like this had happened despite always leaving the system empty. To be fair, the fuel we were using on this trip was pretty old. Self-inflicted pain we guess. So, the engine was treated to a carburettor strip down and clean. Here is what they look like stripped down:

An exciting number of little parts, small jets and galleries to clean out. Removing the thing is a bit of a PITA too - one bolt is tucked alongside the cylinders and you need the ubiquitous very slim 10mm socket on three extension rods that has to be threaded under the fuel filter and some cabling to reach it. The carb came off, was stripped down, cleaned and rebuilt, looking a bit like this:

Refitting it was fine until it wasn't. The slim 10mm socket fell off the end of the three extension rods when it was being removed. The socket rolled into the front cover area of the outboard and although you could see it, there was no gap big enough to retrieve it through. We now know how to remove and refit the ignition system on a Yamaha 20. It was not a good day... 

We binned the old fuel "in case", bought some more fresh E5 stuff (the super-unleaded that has less ethanol mixed in), added some fuel stabiliser, flushed out the old stuff from the fuel lines and the outboard then behaved OK. Time will tell if this is a proper fix as we couldn't run it hard for long. 

After all that torture, we decided to spread the misery to the doglet - she had a shower and looked grumpy afterwards as usual:

The captain just looks his usual bemused self. It was such a fun day....

Things picked up a lot for all of us the next day with a walk along the harbourside, across to Chesil beach and plenty of paddling and stone chasing for the doglet. Lovely weather, just windy again but great views to Portland:

Plenty of time to stand in the shallows and train us to throw stones or a ball for her:

Chesil Beach is good for walking, as long as that is not on the steep pile of pebbles itself! Climbing to the top is hard work for old people like us. The Fleet lagoon area is way easier:

Of course, we needed regular coffee breaks and this rather uninspiring industrial unit houses a very good coffee and bakery place:

We did partake a couple of times. OK, maybe more than a couple. What else amused us? Well, we took the bus into Weymouth for a wander around, did the same but then the train to Dorchester and enjoyed the riverside walk there and the lovely old buildings too. This is the Dorset museum:

and the riverside walk:

Alex and Gisele arrived in Weymouth in their HUGE Nordhavn 55 after a bumpy trip across Lyme Bay.  So, we met up briefly as we were intending to depart for Guernsey the following day. We also got to say hello to Mark, the owner of the first Nordhavn 51 built, Awanui. Mark was in the area, anchored up and heading east the next day. He produces some wonderful detailed You Tube videos on his travels that make our little blog look as sad as it is.

Then the dilemma - finally the strong SW winds were abating and changing direction. There was a little weather window that would get us happily across to Guernsey and the tide times were good too - leave and arrive in daylight still taking full advantage of the spring tides so a very quick run. Only Mrs Toddler had a hospital appointment in Southampton a couple of days later, potentially involving not just the grim sounding eyeball injection but some tests that could take up to 4 hours.  We decided to cancel our boat trip, and instead take the bus / train / bus back to Hythe so we could chauffeur her and the crew could sit with her in the hospital. The joys of public transport were upon us. As usual, a bus from Southampton to Hythe had been cancelled so when the next one arrived at the train station it was already full (so nice that they run a single decker to try and mop up two bus loads of passengers). We ended up using a service that wombles around and stops at every molehill en-route. Sitting in the cooking temperatures on the bus was not nice for us or the doglet.

The trip back was equally fun - the train ended up over half an hour late but we did pop in to see Alex and Gisele in Weymouth which made things much nicer especially for Izzy although she had to wait for her treat:

Torture. Gisele was not as hard on the doglet. She had specially purchased some treats and an edible toothbrush which Izzy devoured happily and rapidly.

Back afloat, we used a couple of days to launch the RIB and give the hull a scrub - two weeks of sun in the clear water here had prompted some fouling which got scrubbed off. Nice job. We also tried (and failed) to tire the dog and get her bored with the beaches. Fat chance of that. Our final trip to the nearby Lidl store seemed quite strange after many (free) days here. We like the Portland Marina folks - v friendly and helpful and they didn't even charge us for power.

Maintenance news:

The gear and throttle control on the flybridge had started to misbehave. The little button that you press to take control at that station was not always working on the first press. Recently it had got to the nth press before it worked and n was slowly getting bigger. So, the time had come for some intervention. We ordered up a new little "push to make" switch from the internet. Nothing too technical, just needed to be waterproof and capable of handling the huge 5 volts the control system uses! Here is what they look like as supplied:

and here are the connections underneath ours:

Irritatingly, the new push button switch we'd bought was too long to fit into the device - it would foul one of the bolts running across the control, a replacement needs to be very short indeed. So, undeterred, we fitted the new button onto the appropriate terminals and secured it in the locker under the helm position. If the original button doesn't work, we can reach inside the locker and use the new one. That will keep us going until we source a shorter replacement and it might well stay in place longer term as a backup.