Airbourne and seeing her bottom again

Yes, the time for the ritual lift out had arrived. The yard team in Whitehaven were great. Getting the aft strops past the stabiliser fins and into the right spot was tricky but they managed it most carefully and then the boat was airbourne again:

and climbing up in the world too:

The stern gear looked grubby as usual but the hull was pretty clean - a winter in fresh water removed most of the summer fouling, then 10 days in salt again killed off most of the freshwater gunge we had accumulated:

After a quick lunch break in town the fun started. The poor boat had not been out for 19 months thanks to the Covid  lockdown and had a long period of forced inactivity. The props had much more fouling than usual as a result:

and the end anode on both had vanished. Annoyingly the one on the main engine prop had taken the bolt with it. We had a new anode ready but not a bolt and had to ping a note to the Guernsey M and G guys to ask just what thread was in the new shaft they fitted as it certainly was not metric (the only stainless bolts of that size we had on board). Here is the "after" picture:

This year we had some very welcome help in the form of John (antifouling supremo), Irene (catering supremo) and Archie the Lakeland Terrier (looking cute supremo). They arrived in their motorhome which became the mobile catering wagon and it was conveniently close at lunchtimes:

As you can see, we had the hoist left in position around us as we were the last lift out on Friday and first in on Monday. This time pressure to get everything done was entirely self imposed though.

All the usual jobs were completed and some new sikaflex was needed in the seam between the keel and the metal shoe that supports the bottom of the rudder but the little chandlery in the marina had a tube. The remainder will, naturally, be rock hard next time we need some. The crew had her usual hours of fun cleaning the hydraulic and main engine coolers:

sporting the latest in must have boat maintenance attire. As usual, the cooler anodes were pretty well wasted when we took them off:

The most annoying thing was that the replacements, supplied by Nordhavn Europe ages ago, were the wrong ones. Wrong length (too long), wrong spacing between the two bolt holes. Clearly for a bigger cooler. It was Sunday when we came to fit them, relaunch was 9am Monday morning, the anodes come from the USA anyway and everywhere is shut. Unamused we had to fit them with one bolt and live with it. 

Once the work was over, the helpers relaxed and enjoyed the sun:

and Archie looked relieved:

but a bit upset that he only got water.

With everything completed, we managed a walk to get the knots out of our backs. Archie was less keen on the walking thing in the warm weather so he was treated to a buggy trip. He has the poshest dog buggy we have ever seen:

and he stares out most regally. 

Relaunch on Monday morning was equally well handled by the yard crew. Back in the air again:

En route to the water again:

There were no dramas (bar getting down the vertical metal ladder and climbing onto the anchor platform to get back on board). A good weekend really, once the lockdown was over the one must do thing was to get the boat lifted and sort out the anodes etc. So, our only "must do" thing has been completed. Now it can feel like a proper cruising time again, just with lots of strange limitations and rules in place. 

The Whitehaven yard team were very good, very careful, very helpful. Having proper concrete hard standing for the weekend rather than the usual hardcore meant that the boat was way way cleaner too. The boatshed that they have is an amazing thing. You can see how tall it is from the earlier pictures, it has a built in travelling crane and has to be one of the best facilites we've seen anywhere.

Happily back afloat we timed our walk to the supermarket perfectly. Just as it started to rain a little. At least the weekend had been perfect weather. 

Neyland to Whitehaven

We sneaked off from Neyland and the very friendly staff there about an hour and a half before low water. There was not much to spare underneath our keel, any later would have been amusing in the extreme.

On the way out of Milford Haven, the crew of Allegro (see the last post) took some rare images of us underway that we need to share:

OK, you might not have needed them but it is our blog so we get to choose what is in here.

As usual, the sea state off Milford and passing the bird sanctuary islands of Skokholm and Skomer was pretty confused. As we cleared them and passed St Brides bay on the way to St David's head where we could turn to head "up north" it calmed a lot and there was a more regular wave pattern making the ride nicer and the stabilisers job easier too. The first part of the route looks like:

and it was pretty quiet. Little commercial traffic, no firing in the huge range area controlled by Aberporth, only a couple of fishing boats and no other pleasure craft out at all. We started to wonder if we had read the wrong weather forecasts!

Passing the South Bishop lighthouse heading north, it has become a tradition to take a picture. This time we were further off than before to clear the overfalls that the tide and wind were creating closer to the rocks:

As is often the way, we were treated to a superb sunset over Ireland:

and the night-time run up towards Anglesey was uneventful. It was nice and light for us passing the Skerries rocks and a chance for yet another lighthouse picture:

As we approached the SE corner of the traffic separation zone just north of there, a commercial guy was heading towards Liverpool. We were not going to be able to pass ahead of him as he came out of the TSS and if we had run to the east, he would have just followed us and delayed our trip north even more, so we opted for a confusing little circle outside the TSS to wait for him to get by:

then we resumed the run up passing the Isle of Man and the many windfarms and their support craft. Visiting the island is not possible anyway as they are stopping pleasure craft from berthing unless in need of refuge. We could not claim that really as it was a sunny day, pretty calm and all was going well. Both the high speed and convential ferries from England across to the island were out and about but no course alteration was needed for once - here is one crossing our bows at a nice 0.8 mile distance:

and here is the rest of the route for folks who need some form of spatial orientation to feel comfortable:

As dusk arrived we were off St Bees head, just south of Whitehaven. This is what it looked like from the pilothouse:

and how "warm" the FLIR thinks the cliffs are:

For info, the other "warm" lump in the sea is a bird, not a pot marker this time. In fact the approach to Whitehaven was remarkably marker free. Still very impressed with the FLIR and how it lets us spot markers, birds, dolphins etc at night, great piece of kit.

We locked in at Whitehaven (again no pictures as getting the boat into the lock and tied up with the swell following us in kept the captain fully occupied). Then a squeeze around the long visitor pontoon (not very deep between it and the lime tongue pier) and finally reversing onto our slot at the inside of it - all nicely pre-arranged by Simone the manager there:

Proper VIP treatment: if only we were VIPs.

The trip took just under 36 hours berth to berth, arriving about 10:30pm. Nothing too dramatic to report, a gentle 1500 rpm cruise most of the way, then a little 1800 rpm run towards Whitehaven and a final wide open throttle burn to give the engine and exhaust their usual clean out. The ARPA function on the Furuno radars is still struggling to acquire targets when the stabilisers are working hard and our heading is changing quickly. (For non boating folks, don't worry about it. Learning about what ARPA is will not enhance your life much.) We made some adjustments suggested by the Furuno UK guys to the inputs but it needs more tinkering.

As the weather for our first couple of days here is forecast to be somewhere between horrid and grim, there will be an opportunity to do that tinkering. So glad we got berthed well before this lot kicked off: