Visitors, bikes and moving berths, very carefully

Whilst in Gosport, to take our minds off the surroundings, we did a few bits and bobs. One of them was to repaint the pedal on the captain's Brompton bike which had lost some paint thanks to his failure to negotiate a dropped curb: 

Sometimes it is good to feel that you have fixed something. Little things pleasing little minds perhaps? By the way, the pedal did get sprayed matt black after the primer. As a treat, the bikes then went to Lee-on-Solent and again to Fareham using the good local cycle paths. We also made a trip to the Nordhavn Europe Office and saw Neil and Phil. This was during the mini heatwave that the south coast was enjoying and so the Covid friendly precaution of having all the doors and windows wide open was much needed. We were most amused at the door prop in use:

Very appropriate in the heatwave. However, Lugger Bob (The Northern Lights engine guru) would argue that Deere Coolguard II is not good for the Deere engines like ours as it is an organic acid formulation which is supposed to promote leaks from coolant pump seals etc. So we hope this is purely a doorstop.

Back in Sunny Gosport, the pig ugly Virgin liner headed out again making lots of noise and wash:

Hope it stays away this time! We were treated to a couple of special visitors too. First of all we collected Izzy the goddog. She was delighted to leave home as Anne, her owner, was looking after a French bulldog puppy who was determined to annoy Izzy at every possible opportunity. Izzy was so keen to escape that she queued up at the car door. As things were so hot, we simply sat on the flybridge in the shade and enjoyed the breeze. The question is, was Izzy eating bacon or just busy with her tongue?

Our social life picked up again when Tina came over from the Isle of Wight. She is going to be an Izzy minder this summer and so it was important that they got reacquainted. It seemed to go well:

When the temperature dropped a bit, we managed a walk to the lovely village of Alverstoke and had a nice protracted lunch at the Albany hotel. The area is such a contrast to the modern horrors of Gosport that they must hate that their postal address has Gosport included in it. When we came back, we needed to swap berths. The marina folks told us that B37 was empty and could be ours for as long as we needed (no idea about Mr Toddler's hospital appointments yet). They also said it was a nice 17 metre berth and wide too. Hum, what wasn't mentioned was the access to it. Here is how it looks on the Haslar marina berthing map thingy (the longest finger on B pontoon):

No big deal?  Well, here is how Google maps sees it - yes, it is the long empty one.....

The Haslar map conveniently does not show the long Royal Naval Sailing Association pontoon that runs the entire length of A, B and C pontoons and is very close indeed. To help you judge the space involved, we are nearly twice the size of the yachts you can see nearby.

 

Approaching from the bottom of the picture, you have to nearly T-bone the yacht on the RNSA pontoon to port, persuade the stern around then back up avoiding the boat alongside and the end of the finger pontoon. Kind of reversing around the corner like in a driving test. The captain had to relent and use the thrusters for this one. How a longer boat than us would get in is a moot point. How we will get out is similarly tricky as we have to reverse the shuffle then back out for about 100m passing further pontoons with similarly small gaps.  No chance to turn around and motor out forwards. We really understand why this berth is empty! However, as we said before, any port in a storm and all that.... At least this one has 32 Amp power. Yes, that is us trying to find a silver lining to the cloud.

Maintenance news:

The waterline was very messy after our long period of inactivity in Dartmouth and here. So, the RIB was launched and the captain had the fun of scrubbing it from the dinghy. Poor boat really needs a lift out now.  Just to add to the captain's happiness, he also gave the holding tank a clean out too. Might as well get all the fun jobs done in one day.

On our trip over from Dartmouth the main engine temperature was showing low and a little "scientific jiggling" of the temperature sender connector fixed it. So, the connector was taken apart and cleaned up as a belt and braces thing:

Hope it hasn't disturbed the earlier "fix" but we will not know until we have a proper run again and get the very bored main engine up to working temperature. 

Overnight there was a HUGE thunderstorm that was not predicted with some vicious winds and torrential rain. Since the met office had forecast 9mph wind with 20 mph gusts, we hadn't bothered to remove the bimini cover. Instead the wind did its best to remove the cover for us. It ended up ripping out a row of stitching that holds a pocket for one of the spreader bars. Not that serious but we have got to find someone to re-stitch it now.  This is the second time we've had a bit of damage to the cover thanks to unexpected high winds. Both times have been in Haslar marina. We really should learn from our mistakes.

Canine invasion, posh Nordhavn 47 time and playing chauffeur

We were a bit tired after arrival in Haslar. The captain especially so thanks to the night time pot marker moment that the crew enjoyed. So, after a walk to the shops we were happy to have a chilled time on the flybridge with Anne, Izzy and Izzy's friend Barney:

Barney is a significantly larger cockapoo then Izzy, but she loves blondes so he is her buddy:

He thinks that he is a lapdog and loves attention. the only problem is that he is 18Kg or so and you really know when he sits or walks on you. After Anne left with Barney (she was looking after him for the day) we kept little Izzy and took her for a paddle as it was rather warm:

Back on the flybridge so that Izzy could dry off, we spotted the Hugo Boss racing yacht heading out to sea. No idea why - the Solent was going to be heaving with boats and at the speed they sail it must be like piloting a dodgem car. Here is a poor picture of the strange looking craft that we had berthed next to before, taken quickly from the flybridge:

On the subject of strange looking craft, the new Virgin liner "Scarlet Lady" returned to Portsmouth with much tooting and fanfare:

Liners seem to get uglier and uglier - or perhaps we are just very old and set in our ways. The Cunard stuff still looks much nicer. A floating Covid breeding ground at the moment? We feel much safer on our little Nordhavn. 

As the weekend weather was rather warm and sunny the boating madness of the south coast got worse. Here is the Marinetraffic AIS picture for Sunday lunchtime. Add in all the boats without AIS or with it turned off and you get an idea of how wild it was:

We didn't venture out into the carnage - instead we took Mr Toddler to his hospital appointment along nicely empty roads as everyone was either at the coast or enjoying their back garden on the hottest day of the year so far. We also popped into Ocean Village in Southampton to check on Malaspina:

Martin and Inge's lovely Nordhavn 47 lives there but thanks to Covid they have struggled to get over to the boat from Hong Kong recently. We just checked that all was well, ran the engines for them and admired how smart she is compared to our poor battered version. Living on board for many years does cause plenty of bumps and marks inside. It was also nice to see relatively empty lockers compared to our very full ones....

We did discover that they have a dying panel gauge so after conferring with Martin, we will pop back sometime to disconnect it. Might even take it away and try to fix it with a soldering iron and new capacitor if we are feeling extra kind / keen. We can probably afford the 20p or so that a new capacitor costs.