Lymington to Portland rather early in the morning and in the fog

We had rather a good time in Lymington, as usual. Tina came over on the ferry and stayed overnight with us - mainly to see Izzy of course. We did some food shopping, went to the Monkey Brewhouse for an excellent evening with Ray and Sara who live in staggering distance from it and forced ourselves to a Marshfield farm ice-cream. 

Meanwhile, Paul the tekkie had been in touch with the USA Zeus folks about the strange comms issue and we implemented a good workaround - using a simple cable that luckily had been pulled through the boat to allow the Zeus box to see the battery voltage even if the comms link dropped. We think they have a software bug to fix.

Our planned trip to Portland was in excellent calmish weather. the tides were a little uncooperative though, forcing an early departure well before it was light. The FLIR was invaluable once again. Izzy was suitably confused when her morning pee trip was at 3am in the dark.

Our timing for tidal help was good. Heading between the forts we hit 11.7 knots over the ground for a speed through the water of 6.4. Rather nice. We only managed to capture 11.6 in our photos though:

The route is simple enough, down the side of the Isle of Wight, then a nice inshore trip which was possible as there was no firing at the Lulworth range:

and you can see the silly departure time and how long it took with lots of nice tidal help:

The only drawback was the fog. As soon as we passed the Needles at the end of the Isle of Wight, it was thick fog. The forecast said patches - this was one huge patch that lasted all the way so no pictures to share, sorry. We were glued to the radar, all the way to the marina in Portland. You could only make out the entrance through the huge breakwater of the harbour when we were around 30 metres away. It was tiring.

Typically, that afternoon the fog cleared and the sun came out, as did another Nordhavn. Chubby, a Swiss flagged 55 came and moored astern of us, From this angle, we don't look quite as eclipsed as we did in reality:

If only it had been weather like that for the trip over.

The good news was that the boat behaved perfectly as did the furry crewmember. The staff in Portland were great, telling us we could stay as long as we wanted and that a visitor from Penarth was very rare (this is a sister marina so freebie berthing for us). What was not to like?

Finishing off, getting culture and heading to Lymington

After all the fun of the relaunch (we still cannot see it as fun by the way) we opted to spend a few extra days in Swanwick. That was to allow the Maricom folks to finish off testing / setting up the Zeus alternator regulator and to calm down a little. It also allowed us to book tickets to the Mayflower theatre in Southampton to hear Martin (of Ann and Martin fame) sing in a mass choir event. We might be biased but his choir were way the best and he looked rather dapper in an orange bow tie. For those folks who know him, here is a "spot the star" game:

The other Anne (yes, it is confusing, a plethora of Ann(e)s in our lives) delivered the brown furry doglet for a little holiday with us. Anne was off for yet more surgery. We had a good day with Anne, Izzy and Richard an ex work colleague of the captain. It involved lunch at the pub then coffee and cake after a little walk down to Universal marina. Tough tough day. Izzy managed it rather well:

At Universal we saw another Nordhavn 47 out of the water, only this one had quite a bimini support structure going on:

We are not sure it will catch on, or appear on the Nordhavn options list.

It felt good to finally escape the rather up market and expensive Swanwick. Paul, the Maricom man had real fun getting the Zeus alternator regulator to talk to the Victron Cerbo box which kind of controls all the battery functions and the inverters. It would connect, run OK and then the link would drop for no obvious reason at all. As the Zeus box was suddenly disconnected from the domestic batteries it was trying to charge them "blind" and so to protect everything goes into limp mode:

It decided to do this on the way to Lymington. To be fair, limp mode is far from a problem. You can change the alternator output by tweaking the "field" current so it would be easy to balance the load from the navigation gear, fans etc. Even if you used the Zeus app to kill the alternator, the new batteries would allow a good 36 hour run using only 50% of their capacity. Then there is always the genset. 

Our trip to Lymington was not fun. Firstly because the Zeus to Cerbo link decided to die and secondly because it was rough. A strong wind over tide in the Solent, causing the typical unpleasant short sharp waves right on the nose. We were happy to tie up on the Dan Bran pontoon, take the doglet for a walk and then open a gin bottle. Washing the salt off the boat could wait until the morning.