A couple of little excursions and maintenance frustrations

Settling back into Penarth life seemed pretty easy really. The bikes were pressed into action again and several trips (on the unexpectedly dry days) around the area followed. One of the favourite spots is through the city and out to Pontcanna. Nice trip, 95% on cycle tracks too. Oh, it also finishes up at a nice Coffee #1 place too:

Must have been cycling into the wind heading there as the coffee seems to be intact but the pastry has taken a pasting..... The area really is good for cycle paths and routes along the rivers. Ideal, at least on nicer weather days.

A little escape followed, three nights in the rather lovely Aberllynfi B and B  (see https://www.aberllynfi.house/ )  which we have stayed in before. A very Covid secure operation too. Whilst there, we wandered around Hay-on-Wye and found this in a window:

Seemed like such a quiet place to have a "BLM" debate going on. Further excursions to Ludlow and then Hereford with the lovely buildings followed:

A good break in a beautiful part of the country. Back in Penarth, we resumed the bike exercise knowing that a few days of truly grim weather were forecast. The new Pret a Manger next to Cardiff central station was a handy stopping off spot although this time the crew was not keen on having her likeness taken:

We were truly horrified at the number of people spilling out from the station and heading into the city. Seeing bouncers on the doors of pubs (including Wetherspoons) at 11am was not edifying or, perhaps, contributing to an improvement in the local Covid infection rate.

As the dentist was beckoning and we needed to be around the Hythe area for that, we took advantage of the trip back to Hampshire and spent some time on the Isle of Wight, invading Tina's life for a weekend. Owing to a horrid miscalculation (we have no kids and so half term dates are not often in our minds) the ferry over was manically busy:

Having somehow survived the madness known as a Red Funnel ferry, things got way better. The crew was in a happy place:

visiting the Isle of Wight donkey sanctuary with 118 different donkeys to admire / pet / mark off on the sheet she is clutching. Somehow she resisted the "donkey twitcher" approach and we left before seeing all of them. Quite fortunate really or we might still be there hunting for the slightly shy inmates.

Walks around the coast at Bonchurch, an excellent lunch at the Albert Cottage in East Cowes and generally catching up kept us very happy indeed.

Maintenance News:

Sometime ago, when using the electric pump to empty the black water tank, we noticed a little weep from the manual pump that is in the same outlet line as a backup in case the electric one fails. Only this time, it was the manual one that was giving trouble. 

An overhaul kit was procured and then we had the fun of dismantling the pump, trying to ignore the odours and interesting sludge that accumulates inside it. The rebuild was totally unsuccessful as the case seemed to have been butchered before with one of the screws that holds the casing together having been re-drilled for an unknown / unfathomable reason. The gloop that someone had used to seal it was no longer working and the damage to the case meant there were three options. Either bodge it again, replace the entire pump or just bypass it and rely on the electric one or shore pump out stations. The third option won and the captain measured up for a nice stainless steel piece of tube to bridge the hoses. That way an new manual pump could always be refitted if needed pretty quickly (if messily).

Here is the offending article:

Many bad words might have been used about it and the bodger who messed up the casing during the first couple of years of the boat's life.....

Penarth, cars, fuel shortages, holed boats and furry dogs

Back in Penarth, settled onto our new berth (a different hammerhead) and enjoying the lovely bad weather, we pondered on why we had headed here and not followed Capt Rae to Portimao. He was reporting beer for 3 Euros and sun. The challenge for us is now the 90 day post Brexit restriction on staying there. Heading back to the UK across Biscay in January was not tempting although Capt Rae would certainly do it if needed based on his past exploits. 

As the rain gently fell, we opted to do a few inside maintenance jobs. One was putting a new CMOS battery into the navigation PC. This is a 24 volt special bit of kit with lots of USB and COM ports, the kind of things you just don't get normally now. The COM ports are real old technology but allow the PC to get inputs from the satellite compass, depth sounder, GPS, AIS etc independently of the normal ethernet network. So, if the Furuno black box failed, we could still navigate very happily using the PC. If it was behaving.

You can see how many connections there are from this forest of wire attached to it:

After careful labelling of the 5 COM connections, 4 USB, two ethernet and remote control panel plus power connections, the PC was dragged out and dismembered:

Can you spot the backup battery on the motherboard? Nope, neither could we as it was hidden below another circuit board. Tricky to access to say the least. After raiding Tesco for a new battery, it was fitted and the PC reinstalled. At least it can tell the time now.

When the rain stopped, we did a little catching up, with Simon the yacht surveyor and Nikki his lovely lady. They brought along Luna - they were dogsitting and she was most interested in our cake:

We needed to get back to the New Forest to collect our car and that worked out rather well. A lift from Simon to the motorway, a lift from Anne's friend Liz to her house, then a lift from Anne back to Hythe. We felt like hitchhikers. After borrowing the Toddlermobile to collect our car from store we faced a dilemma. Our car didn't have enough fuel in it to get back to Wales and the local panic buyers were busy draining the filling stations. We passed two empty ones on the way to the storage place. So, the captain did a loop round via the local Morrisons who had fuel and (only!) joined a 10 minute queue to fill up.  They had jacked up their price rather a lot which annoyed us so it was a one off visit, no plans to go there again in future.

Liberated, with around 400 miles in the tank, we celebrated by taking the Toddlers to a garden centre (alien environment for us, full of strange things that we would find no use for) and then collecting Izzy the goddog before heading back to Wales.

Izzy was VERY furry and desperately needed a groom. The VERY wet weather and VERY long fur meant that after each walk we had a long drying off process to contend with:

You can see how much she likes her onesie. The walking hearth-rug enjoyed playing on the barrage:

although the wind made it even harder for her to see out, as per the picture above. Relief came in the form of Paula the groomer who transformed that furry girl into a way smaller dog who was then treated to the beach at Barrybados:

After returning a smaller and tidier Izzy to her owner, then the flybridge cushions and bimini cover to our lockup we took Mr Toddler for a hospital follow-up visit which all went well. Reasonable weather was forecast  so we returned to Penarth - time to get a few bits sorted on the boat we thought before the really bad weather sets in. Upon our return we saw this rather battered yacht on our pontoon:

Yes, the damage was as bad as it looks and being an elderly craft she was pretty substantially built too. Luckily she had a proper chain locker bulkhead so only the "nose" area flooded a bit. Some yachts might have struggled to keep the waves out with that kind of damage.  We subsequently found out that the boat was motoring along with the tide, on autopilot, when it hit a navigation buoy. Buoy 1, yacht and owner (who hurt his ankle in the impact) 0.  No comment needed or made.

Maintenance news:

Pretty normal stuff really, the RIB outboard had an oil and filter change, plus fresh gearbox oil (always a nice messy job). Most of the exposed parts of the hull got some polish / sealant to help it survive the ravages of the winter and the exterior teak was treated to some Boracol to stop it going nice and green during the wet weather that is bound to come. All very unexciting  but necessary.