After a whole one night afloat, making sure that the boat still kind of liked us and all the systems seemed to be working OK, we headed off yet again. Basically it is because we are way too nice to the little dog. We'd booked a hound friendly place near Hereford for a week so she could explore new places, sniff them, bark at new people and generally have what she classes as fun. We just tag along of course.
The accommodation was a tremendous find. Called Fred's Shed it was a restored and converted farm building named after a stray cat that lived in it before renovation. We drove up via the car dealer in Three Cocks (yes!) for a car service then on to the beautifully decorated and furnished place. Plenty of repurposed things including various bits of ironwork found when they were digging out the floor to install underfloor heating:
Most artistic, inventive and clever. We also were very lucky in that the owners Paul and Sarah are just lovely people. They joined us for a drink one evening and then Sarah did the same when she was alone a couple of nights later.
Knowing that we were going to be in the area, John and Irene from "up north" (the folks who live near Newcastle) had rented somewhere nearby and so we managed to catch up with them for a while too. All good. We visited some favourite haunts (Leominster, Ledbury and Ludlow) plus a couple of forest visits so the badly behaved doglet could have some fun there.
Ludlow's interesting array of local shops had a few odd jars of onions on offer:
The marketing folks must have conducted lots of consumer research before naming them we guess:
A good week, in fact a very good one. If you fancy visiting that area, we strongly recommend Fred's Shed.
Back afloat, we had a couple of manic days trying to clean up the dirt and green goo that had appeared during our time away (5 weeks in total) and had a visit from Bernie (the guy who owns Mimosa, the Dunkirk little ship) and his dog Beau. We enjoyed lunch at the Pilot pub in Penarth, together with the sister of a friend of Bernie's. The friend was also mad enough to own an old timber boat and even wrote an amazing historical book about it. Have a look a the fascinating book he wrote about Sheemaun and the many varied owners sometime:
The lunch was a bit like an old Brian Rix farce as Bernie and the sister interpreted the purpose of their lunchtime meeting very differently. Naturally, we found it highly amusing. Bernie escaped though and stayed overnight on board with us. Beau took over Izzy's basket - amazingly with no complaints from her:
We then decided that the poor boat needed a trip out, just around the bay to warm up all the mechanical bits and the electronics. We picked a pretty warm and very calm day and headed off. Izzy was, as usual, unimpressed with the idea of having her lifejacket on but womaned up:
Our pretty normal wombling around the bay track ensued, following the deeper bits as seen by MarineTraffic:
Vesselfinder on the other hand has a way less defined and rather wrong view of our movements:
albeit more colourful.
Maintenance news:
Whilst we were in Canada, we had an email from the marina saying that someone had run into the back of the boat. That cheered us up no end. Luckily it was a very light outboard powered yacht and it had only dented the stainless steel rub-rail around the bathing platform and put some scratches on the stainless raised platform area. The yacht was new to the owner and he discovered how hopeless a little outboard engine is running astern trying to take the momentum away from even a small yacht. They'd sent us this picture of the damage:
If you try hard you can see the dent in the stainless rubbing strip. There again you almost certainly have way better things to do. Fortunately for us the Nordhavn is built like a small tank and after some careful inspection we found that the GRP itself was fine. Getting new stainless with the right profile, having it bent to fit and then put in place properly is not a simple task. Luckily for the guy who ran into us, it is also not one we want to undertake lightly so the boat is keeping her little battle scar for now.
After the exciting run around the bay, we gave the main engine an oil and filter change so it had nice clean oil in it for the quieter winter period. The Webasto boiler that heats the boat was treated to a new fuel filter. Izzy was treated to some chicken chews and the captain was treated to an exhaust pipe repair job after spotting some soot under the Webasto heater in the lazarette:
The flexible stainless steel hose that fits directly onto the heater gets pretty hot and tends to fail where it is clamped in position over time. Apparently, this was time so it was wrestled off the heater and silencer and the split / leaky end cut off:
This time there was enough "spare" pipe to allow it to be refitted and put back into service. Next time it will need renewing. We keep spare hose and the insulating wrap on board just in case. Over the years we've tried original Webasto hose, original Eberspaecher hose and once some cheap Chinese stuff. They all seem to fail in the same way at around the same time. Such is life.
Adding to the fun, we swapped out some of the galley downlighters to LED. Not because they had failed but because we needed a few good halogen fittings as spares. We have dimmers fitted to many of the lights on board and they only work with Halogen bulbs. Several of the old fittings had split due to age when we removed them to have the headlining replaced. It does mean a brighter galley area which will show any marks or mess more starkly. A major disadvantage.
