Just enjoying Bangor and fixing things

Funnily enough, we tried hard to get some sleep when we arrived in Bangor but somehow, it eluded us. So, after a shower and breakfast we ventured to the office to "check in" and collect the gate codes etc. We were welcomed like old friends which was rather nice. Then it became even more social. A chat with lots of local folks and an invite to a BBQ that we had to decline as we were likely to fall asleep during it. We did manage to wash off (well, simply hose off to be fair) the vast amounts of salt we had accumulated from our trip(s) up here.

Amongst the many excitements was a coffee and scone stop at the Guillemot with Ken. Debbie had the feeble excuse of going to work. As you can see from the website (weblink) they have quite a range of food offerings. We only sampled the rather good scones. 

On the trip up, the ensign (red duster) that had been repaired by the crew numerous times, started to fray again. As the original proportions had already been seriously altered by cutting off the trailing edge and resewing it many times, we felt that a big investment was needed. Instead of the nice sewn version we bought a cheapo printed thing from the local chandlery and were amazed at how "red" it was compared to our old (2009) faded version:

On the social front, we also tried out one of our old favourite spots, the Olive Tree. We met up with "Stornoway George" there, the man who owned a lovely Fisher trawler yacht who we met in, yes, you guess it, Stornoway. More scone sampling, again good although the place was very quiet. We wonder how long it will survive.

When in Bangor, if you get an invite to the Royal Ulster Yacht club, just go. We got one and did. It was yacht race night so we watched the yachts trundling back and forth on broad reaches whilst enjoying an excellent dinner. Some fun came when we wanted to pay the bill - the crew ended up having a little wrestling match with Debbie on the way to the bar. We fear that this will be discussed in the club for years to come. Sorry Debbie, but we are pleased that the crew won the battle.

We did have one excursion from Bangor courtesy of the wrestling folks. They drove us to Donaghadee so we could have a wander around but mainly to visit the Copeland distillery. As you can imagine, persuading us to go was tricky.

They've done a great job in the modern building, keeping the still area open to the small coffee shop:

and the smell was quite wonderful, sadly missing from these pictures:

We just sampled their coffee (good) but were treated to a bottle of the excellent Raspberry and mint gin that we'd sampled a couple of years ago. There is plenty of choice:

Outside were some containers that might appeal to serious alcoholics:

We resisted. It was not hard to do so either. Wandering around the sea front and harbour we added another lifeboat picture to our archive:

The visitor berths behind it are not too appealing though. 

Debbie (the wrestler) is a seriously artistic lady and she gave us a look around the Seacourt print workshop in town. There was a truly amazing exhibition of prints from linocuts with incredible detailing and they were BIG too. This one was outstanding:

Meanwhile, we had become famous on a Facebook group - even if the person that posted the picture to "Trawler Life" seemed unaware of Nordhavn craft:

Our week in Norn Iron came to a very happy close with dinner at Tuk Tuk.  Here is their weblink . Friday night and it was wildly busy but served very authentic food. The captain had some Malaysian dishes that reminded him of the food he loved during work trips to that country. Excellent food and company (Keith and Ingrid) made for another great evening that stretched into the early hours of the following morning sitting in the cockpit of their yacht. 

The last day in town involved some shopping, more local scone time, some course prep and then a guided tour of the boat for Andrew and Lisa. They are yottie folks and Andrew has been devouring Nordhavn owner's videos. We think he quite fancies one as his next boat. We'd met them after our Tuk Tuk dinner and it was a great pleasure to host them on board for a look around. Andrew seemed very settled in:

The captain so recognises that grin, from when we first looked at the boat with a plan to buy her...... Lisa - sorry, your bank account will never recover.

The week in Bangor passed so quickly. So many friendly folks there,

Maintenance news:

That pesky flybridge throttle / gear controller was in for some surgery. The intermittent issue with the button you press to "take command" was getting to be very annoying. Last year we'd tried to swap it out, only to find that the push to make switch had to be way shorter than most of those you can buy, thanks to the bolts that hold the case together getting in the way. So, we removed the controller and opened it up. You can see the old button at the bottom of the picture:

It was replaced and the controller rebuilt. We will see how it behaves now......

The stern gland got tightened a bit to slow the drip rate and we took out the two duck bill valves that stop water siphoning back into the grey water tank and main cabin heads. They were pretty grubby and one certainly needed to be replaced. Only they are different to the ones that protect the wing and genset, fore heads and black water tank. Grr. Why? As the folks at M and G in Guernsey decided to replace the original valves with Vetus ones when they swapped out all the sanitary hoses. Please don't ask why. There is no logical answer. We ordered some Vetus duck bills.

Most annoyingly, the manual bilge pump that we rebuilt a while ago had a little weep from a seam. There are some pictures in this blog post . We resealed it but we think that this winter it is "rip and replace" time. The huge pump is good but the boat had an aluminium body and so was bound to corrode over time. A new bronze version is a really crazy price, even compared to the usual inflated prices for boat parts. We might do some investigation into alternatives.

The engine room had a quick clean up too - it was pretty grubby, the captain was ashamed enough to do something about it.