Penarthing and the summer in numbers

The boat has settled into Penarth quite happily it seems. As have we. Mind you, the bilge pump was running rather too regularly for our liking and when the captain investigated, we found a fresh water leak into the bilge. Of course, tracing it was going to be a nightmare as the water was pooling under the diesel supply tank (forward of the engine) but clearly was not coming from there. If only the Lugger ran on tap water....

After some investigation and head scratching, one fitting on the heat exchanger that was installed last year in Ardrossan was leaking:

Some gentle tightening of the left hand one (hot water supply out to the boat) and it behaved luckily. All that was left was to dry out the areas that the water had been tracking through. That, will be a longer and trickier job......

We did enjoy the unexpected Indian summer though, walking Lorna's dogs Pip and Poppy a little:

and of course delivering lots of cwtches.


Some numbers for those who are numerically minded or terminally sad:

Since leaving Gosport on April 1st, we have notched up 300 main engine hours, 86 generator hours and a huge 6 for the wing engine (over many shorter runs)  just to keep it running and happy. That was a total of around 2015 nautical miles (we timed many trips to get maximum tidal help hence a higher average NM/hour than our normal cruise speed!) That is about 2320 land miles or for the continental readers about 3730 Km.

What else of note? Well the fuel burn will have to wait until we top up again as the nice and basic mechanically controlled genset and wing engine don't record fuel burn. Guess what - the two Webasto heaters don't either. We did use one 6Kg propane cylinder so we must have eaten and drunk a bit too.

We visited 17 islands in our travels:

Isle of Wight, Guernsey, Skomer, Lewis, Harris, Bernera, Scalpay, Shiants (count them as 1!), North Uist, Benbecula, South Uist, Eriskay, Barra, Vatersay, Mull, Skye, Gigha. We won't count the little ones in Strangford Lough that we visited by car or Northern Ireland or Anglesey. There are plenty left though, many of which we just cruised past like Egg, Muck, Rum etc etc etc. We have absolutely no desire to anchor off one and go ashore in the dinghy in pouring rain just to say we have "been there".

The main engine, the big Lugger behaved well - just an annoying oil weep from the pesky turbo oil drain pipe that was "one of those" jobs to fix. We could have left it until we returned as it was far from a problem and it wasn't going to fail on us. However, better to have it right. We also treated it to an oil and filter change mid summer.

The wing and genset were impeccably behaved, we cannot blame the genset for sucking up jellyfish. Saying that they were "impeccable" is inviting disaster of course.....

The Furuno gear and navigation PC also seemed very happy. We still have a strange and very very intermittent issue where the Simrad autopilot loses communication with the plotters / PC for a second or so and then resets itself perfectly. This happens on perhaps one trip every two months or so. It has a simple NMEA cable interface and the cable is fine. It doesn't seem to be an issue from the Plotter / PC end as the error has happened when the autopilot is being fed from either of them. No pattern to this or obvious reason but it has been like it since we bought the boat and happens so infrequently that we live with it.

The 20HP Yamaha on our RIB needs a new part - the cold start enrichment thing (a strange heated wax pellet design) is playing up. The engine starts fine and then will cut out if you don't give it some throttle to help during warm up. Apparently these are known to misbehave and fail over time.

Damage - well one snapped mooring line and one burst fender from the Dunstaffnage battering.

Not a bad season all in all

Neyland to Penarth

We crept out of Neyland a good couple of hours after low water but with only just over a foot of clearance under the keel in some spots. Always character forming. The idea of getting stranded in the entrance channel and sitting there blocking it up waiting for the tide to rise a little isn't appealing. We already felt like the main topic of conversation in Neyland (lots of folks walking up the pontoon for a gawp, seeing us then saying "we don't get big serious boats like this in here"). We had missed the crew of C-Spirit though, no sign of them during our stay.

Getting stuck and delayed would have been even more annoying as we had timed our departure to allow some time for a detour around the firing range we mentioned before and to still optimise the use of the tides up to Cardiff.

Heading out through the harbour, the range safety vessel Smit Merrion passed us and advised that they would be firing with a 3 mile range. Not too bad when the biggest diversion could be up to 12 miles! As we left Milford Haven we were treated to a lovely sun-down series of views:

The Castlemartin Range control man was most polite when we called - perhaps he thought that we looked "Naval". Or perhaps it was because they seem to have to chase most people by VHF or safety boat as people don't bother to radio them for advice? Anyway, he gave us the course to steer to clear the firing fun. As the light vanished we were treated to an excellent pyrotechnics show on the land. Battlefield flares hanging in the sky and making the beach look like day. Red tracer fire. It was all going on. Wonder what the cost per hour for the show was - actually no, we would rather not wonder. Our images of it are a bit feeble. This is the best that the tablet could deliver:

Very feeble really. The proper camera didn't do much better either as a wave interrupted a picture of the coloured tracer fire in quite a pretty way:

The range control guy was great, called us a couple of times to give us new courses that minimised the diversion we had to make and had a sense of humour when we left the range area and thanked him for the free fireworks show. All in all it was about an hour's worth of diversion but quite spectacular. 1 hour = just over £3 in diesel. We couldn't have bought a box of sparklers for that.

The detour isn't obvious from our track:

We would have just tucked much closer to the land when we left Milford Haven rather than making a big loop around.

The forecast shift in the wind from SE to SW had, of course, not happened. In fact is stayed SE'ly all the way to Cardiff but as it was pretty gentle, the waves that built up even when it was wind over tide towards the end of the run, were not unpleasant.

Heading towards Swansea, it got very boring frankly. Nothing else apart from buoys and land on the radar and of course nothing showing on the AIS either:

That is a pretty rare sight. Makes being on watch pretty simple though. As the sun made an appearance, we were treated to the most appealing sight of  the old coal / biomass fuelled Aberthaw power station. Even better was the news that it had just been found guilty of breaching allowed pollution levels, see BBC news report. We tried not to breathe in:

By now we were enjoying a good shove from the fair tide (on this trip you aim to take all the flood tide for the last part of the run as the further up the Bristol channel you get, the stronger the tide gets. Also, arriving at Cardiff around high water makes the locking in process quick and easy. Of course, as it was high water some folks were locking out of the main ship docks. They also had a grey hull but a little more weaponry than us and looked quite sinister in silhouette as they passed us:

She was HMS Kent by the way.

We reached the entrance channel to Cardiff more or less exactly at the time we expected (10:20) after a little wing engine exercise and of course a burn for the big Lugger too. The bad news is that the inbound locks are at 15 and 45 minutes past the hour. Hence we pottered around a little before calling the barrage control and heading towards the locks. The cliff face at Penarth has been disfigured by some of the ugliest flats we have ever seen:

They look more like the concrete horrors you get on some south London sink estates than flats in up market Penarth overlooking the water and Cardiff Bay. Demolition needed soon! In the narrow approach channel looking towards the breakwater bounding the locks:

We had a great welcome. Lorna walked up to the locks with Pip and Poppy, her two dogs. Then Steve (the waterbus man who owns Bronwen the spaniel) was at the entrance to the marina taking pictures of us as we motored through. Lisa the marina administrator lady was waving from the office balcony. Then we got help with out lines as we moored and very shortly afterwards, one of the cleats on the pontoon was unbolted and moved for us so we could tie the stern of the boat better. This felt like coming home / a royal visit all rolled into one!

No maintenance underway to report or dramatic engine failures etc etc. Sorry to disappoint on our last major trip of the year. Mind you, we think that the forward facing white navigation light failed shortly before they were all turned off. Need to check that as it might need a new bulb. That one is the original so it hasn't done too badly really.

On a soggy cold day we will prepare a few numbers for those who like such things as a summary of the cruising season. In the meanwhile, we need to settle into Penarth life and prepare the boat for a less active lifestyle.....