Pottering and preparing

What to do when back on board after a road trip? Well, plenty really. Apart from trying to catch up on maintenance / replacement work that needs to be done this winter, we tried to have some fun as well. Dinner at the Pilot one evening was in the fun category, with the lovely owners of a Nordhavn 86 based in the Mediterranean. Only a teeny bit bigger than our 47 as you can see from this MarineTraffic image:

The Pilot was raided once more for Sunday lunch with Nikki.  A proper happy making place.

We took the arms off the pilothouse helm seat as they were getting very worn and dropped them into Wayne the trimmer for recovering.  Our flybridge has one large seat behind the two individual chairs for the helm and lookout. It has always been a pian - the seat cushion and backrest are both made in one piece. They are huge and hard to store in the winter, plus the foam isn't the most comfortable either and the vinyl is showing signs of age. So, we squeezed them into the car and took them to the lovely ladies in Bristol at the Bristol caravan and boat seat cover centre. The plan is to get them replaced, this time halved and in a nicer outdoor fabric rather than vinyl, with a way better foam sandwich inside.

Since the boat hadn't had a run following our return from Dun Laoghaire we felt it was time. We had a choice of very windy days, wet and windy days or a simple windy or wet day. We opted for a slightly soggy calm day and did the regulation if slightly tedious, run around the bay:

Getting the navigation gear going, warming up the wing engine and giving the main a good hard run too. We love having the sheltered water of the bay available for trips out during the winter, runs in the RIB etc. An ideal area. 

We were glad that we'd completed our little trip before this lot arrived:

and in case you think that is just for the offshore areas and that the Bristol Channel would be sheltered:

It isn't often that you see am inshore waters forecast saying "decreasing to severe gale force 9".  Mind you, the sea state in the English Channel was going to be worse, here is the forecast for the Portland / Channel Islands area:

Sea state of very high means 9 to 14 metre high waves. Almost as high as we are long.  With no desire to leave the berth either under power or because we had broken free, we simply added a couple of fenders and checked that all our lines and covers were secured, ready to ride it out. Sure enough, a grim day but not quite as blowy as the forecast - Penarth is pretty sheltered really. Rain - oh yes, plenty of that. A good job that we took the boat out earlier on as there will be loads of timber coming down the rivers into the bay. 

So, in preparation for heading somewhere warmer and hopefully less soggy, we gave the bikes a clean and lube, then packed them away. They are joining us on our upcoming travels.

Maintenance News:

When we returned with our untouched heating boiler, it had to be refitted into the little hiding place in the lazarettte so we could keep warm. That went relatively well, here it is back in situ:

and we await news that the test harness has finally arrived at Butler Technik. No idea when we will remove it again. Amazingly, the thing fired up first time, no trouble getting fuel into the pump and burner. Bleeding air out of the coolant loop around the air handlers took a bit longer.

Microwavegate was calling. If you remember, our built in device failed when we were in South Uist, not an ideal place to find a replacement. We had bought a free standing microwave in Stornoway that was annoying the crew a lot. So, we took the old failed unit out of the cabinetry and measured up the space available. Typically, the cabinet isn't "normal kitchen unit"  sized so you are very restricted in which makes you can buy. The crew was very happy that a Miele offering was the perfect size. The Captain and our bank manager were less impressed. So, one was duly ordered and of course the fittings to hold it in place were different to the failed Miele (8 years old) which had also been different to the original which failed after 9  years of pretty heavy use.

The new fittings were duly installed and the new device went in amazingly easily compared to the struggles we had with the last one: Naturally the fascia was a different size so the beading trim around it has some big gaps at the corners now. We can live with that, getting new beading to match the cabinets would be hard:

A happy crew again and a smart new microwave, Only confusing bit is that they have swapped the positions of the start and stop buttons. Why??.

What else did we do? Well, the Yamaha outboard on the RIB had a run, then fresh oil put in for the winter. The engine room fans were corrosion protected and we treated the bikes to a long overdue clean and chain lube session, together with some fresh sealant in the tubeless tyres  The main engine shaft stuffing box was nipped up a bit after the run around the bay as it was  dripping more than necessary. All in all we were pretty busy but had ticked a few items off the to do list which felt good.