Still Dartmouthing

Wandering around Dartmouth you see so many lovely old buildings:

with plenty of character and the odd leaning wall... At this time of year you also get plenty of coach tour people. They certainly have character but it is way less appealing than the buildings. Somehow the "Saga coach tours" lot believe that they own the pavements, can walk in the roads, don't have to queue and expect everyone else to get out of their way. The best bit is that they all get taken away around lunchtime back to their hotels (perhaps for a little sleep?) and the town becomes much nicer again. Yes, before you remind us we are indeed old enough to go on a Saga holiday, however we have not developed the necessary behaviours yet.

John and Irene arrived in town with their motorhome and set up camp in Stoke Fleming, the one remaining site this side of the river. They walked into town and joined us on board for lunch and dinner. Archie the Lakeland terrier was suitably tired and so a makeshift dog bed was assembled on board for him. Cue one happy snoozy dog:

The rather busy social activities continued when Millie, the yacht that you have met in this blog before, pitched up returning from a good break in the Scilly islands. They joined us for dinner on board, as did June's old boss Bernie and his friend Paul a day later. Yup, lots of cooking. We escaped from that when the Millie crew invited us to join them up at the anchor stone for a pizza dinner. Millie looked good anchored just downstream from Dittisham:

and Richard looked good and perhaps a tad smug in his new T shirt from Quba. Spot the slight error:

We took the RIB to the Ferry Boat Inn and ordered four of their rather lovely pizzas to take back to the yacht and eat in the aft cockpit. Whilst waiting a beer was needed - it was a beautiful sunny day after all. The view as the sun was dropping , the pizza and beer made all of us rather contented:

Maintenance news:

The Captain got a bit busy and setup the "hot spare" autopilot computer with the same configuration that had been working well in the primary one. Then we swapped over to use the second computer and pump for a change just to check it was all working OK.

We also did a few bits to help Simon and Amanda who own the day boat hire business here. After their nasty Quad bike accident, Simon is in recovery mode at home so we tried to get a genset going for the guy who pumps out the boats and checked one of them for water in the fuel. Luckily, there was none despite the filler cap being left off. If you are boatless and in Dartmouth, have a look at their website, book a boat and go and enjoy the beautiful river.

Dartmouthing

After some time wandering around and enjoying / getting reacquainted with Dartmouth, we had a lovely day promised:

So it was chores time. Washing machine and tumble dryer busy (thank you again 32A shorepower) and the captain decided to have a go at fixing the drips from the backup bilge pump(s) pipework. The story goes something like this. The boat had one main bilge pump, a Jabsco belt driven job and a huge manual pump in the main aft bilge. It also had a backup pump in the bilge forward of the main engine mounted slightly higher with an alarm to warn of higher than normal bilge water levels. 

We never totally trusted the Jabsco pump and as it was getting elderly, we had a second high capacity pump fitted into the main engine bilge with a nice stainless steel non return valve that was plumbed into the outlet for the manual pump. This involves a T piece with an elbow fitted into it as well. The captain found that all three joints were dripping when he did his regular test of the backup pump. Lovely, especially as it is close to the fresh water system immersion heater connections.

Taking the annoying plastic junction thing out was tricky as all three pipes connected to it are wire reinforced, big, well clipped into place and unwieldy. None of them wanted to move. It made unscrewing the hose adapters so so simple especially as reaching it involves kneeling, leaning forward and twisting. Oh, it was fun. The weight of the pipes on the plastic threads seemed to have caused the little bit of thread sealant that had been applied by the M and G guys to fail so everything was cleaned up and some Leak Lock liberally applied more in hope than anything else:

The blue mess on the fitting is where the captain got some of the excess on his hand which then got smeared everywhere whilst trying to "coax" the pipes back onto the fittings. It was such fun, especially when testing it the next day, one of the fittings still dripped. Suitably annoying. The plan is to get a proper stainless steel custom fitting made up during the winter which will tolerate pressure at strange angles from the stiff and unyielding pipes way better.

Luckily the following day the sun came out again and we could walk and enjoy the harbour area:

This rather nice view of the harbour and up to the naval college is across a building site where some folks we know are busy having a new house built:

We have been invited for coffee once it is done!

A RIB trip up to Dittisham was carried out in wonderful weather enjoying views of the rather palatial places on the riverside:

We left the dinghy and walked up the hill to the very strange Red Lion pub come B and B come shop come post office which always was run in the weirdest way. Now, with Covid precautions in place it has become even stranger and well worth a visit for the novelty factor. Oh, and the view from the terrace:

On the way back down we saw that one of the locals had a most appropriate registration plate:

Remember, locals call the place "Ditsum" not Dittisham. We also saw an elderly tractor that needed some TLC just parked in an open fronted shelter:

As we know 3/8ths of very little about such things bar recognising it as a Ferguson we consulted the oracle - Robert's dad. He reported:

That fergie is an early one, it's got the very narrow tyres on the front, it could be a Ford /Ferguson for a time Henry Ford and Harry Ferguson were partners but they fell out when Ford tried to purlin the patent rights to the Ferguson hydraulic system it ended with a multi million dollar court case that Ferguson won, something in the order of 32 million bucks I think

So now, you are as close to an expert as we are.