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.