The devastation of a UK marina encourages us to take urgent action

Ravensdale on the Solway Firth

This week I’ve been preparing for the worst by uploading all our important documents to the cloud.

Watching videos of boats that sank when Storm Emma destroyed a UK marina made me decide it was time to ensure our paperwork would survive if something like that ever happened to us.

More than 80 boats sank or were damaged and pontoons were torn from their anchorages when hurricane-force winds battered Holyhead Marina in North Wales earlier this month.

Some of these vessels had been people’s homes.

This video showing drone footage of the devastation was published last Sunday - Holyhead Storm Emma

It was horrible to watch and very scary to think that it could happen to us. My heart goes out to everyone involved.

Safeguarding our important documents

Soon after we moved on board our 43ft seagoing cruiser Ravensdale at Maryport Marina in Cumbria I made sure all our important documents were in one place and easy to grab in an emergency.

But I had been meaning to make sure we had a back-up plan and the destruction of Holyhead Marina galvanised me into action, so I spent Wednesday afternoon scanning all our important documents. 

Me sorting the scanned documents into the relevant folders

I then sorted them into folders named “boat” (boat insurance, boat registration, ships’ radio licence and our short wave radio certificates), “car” (car registration document and car insurance) and “personal” (including our birth certificates, marriage certificate, driving licences, passports and life insurance policies) and uploaded them all to the cloud.

God forbid we will ever need them.

However, if anything happens to Ravensdale and we’re unable to save the hard copies of our important paperwork, then at least we will still have access to all the relevant information to enable us to start getting our lives sorted out again.


BOAT – Bring Out Another Thousand

Not long after we bought Ravensdale and moved on board in November 2016 someone told us that BOAT stood for Bring Out Another Thousand.

They were not wrong and this week has once again proved the accuracy of this acronym.

We had been having problems with our generator for some time. It never started the first time and needed repeated attempts with rest periods in between before it would fire up. This was annoying, but at least it did always go.

However, more recently, it has cut out while running and refused to restart so we decided the time had come to replace it with a new, hopefully more reliable one.

This week we ordered a Honda EU22i 2.2KW petrol inverter generator and it arrived a couple of days later. It runs like a dream and is really quiet.

Phil checking out the new generator on Ravendale's aft deck

A much smaller purchase was a bargain tool sharpening station from our local Lidl supermarket that Phil has already found useful for sharpening his drill bits.

Phil sharpening a drill bit

While doing so, he also sharpened all our kitchen knives and scissors so it’s definitely going to earn its keep.

Keeping Ravensdale clean

In our previous shore-based life, Phil always kept our cars lovely and clean.

Now, he lavishes his love and attention on Ravensdale.

As soon as she starts to look a little grubby, he’s out there with the boat wash scrubbing her decks and hosing her down.

Phil washing off the boat wash on Ravensdale's foredeck

Meanwhile, our car has to fend for herself, but we’ve found our new method of keeping her clean is working quite well.

We park her facing in different directions depending on whether her front or back end is most in need of a wash and, so far, the rain is doing a great job 😊

Farewell to “The Swan Man”

Last Saturday, we learnt that one of the other liveaboards here, who used to feed the swans that are regular visitors to the marina, sadly passed away the previous day.

Phil Lee, also known as “The Swan Man”, was very knowledgeable about Mute Swans and fed the pair that frequently turned up at the marina up to five times a day.

I am planning to attend his funeral on Monday and spent some time this week looking out photographs of him feeding the swans for use at the service.

Phil Lee with the swans at Maryport Marina

I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts that he was away from the marina for a while and that he’d asked me to feed the swans with the floating duck and swan food he kept on his boat if I saw them looking hungry.

I’ve fed them on a number of occasions and more recently discovered that other people had also been feeding them.

Me feeding the swans at Maryport Marina

After his death, the marina moved his boat and I’ve taken over his supply of food intending to carry on where he left off.

The only problem being that I’ve only seen the swans once since then.

They appeared first thing in the morning and I selfishly decided to have my own breakfast before feeding them and, by the time I’d finished, they’d gone.

To say I felt guilty would be an understatement and I promised myself that in future I would feed them as soon as I saw them. Sadly, I’m still waiting for them to return…

Photography feedback

I’ve been out indulging myself in one of my favourite hobbies – photography - again this week.

I’m still finding plenty of photo opportunities in my adopted hometown and enjoy posting them on a local Facebook group.

Maryport in the sunshine

Maryport lighthouse with the Scottish hills on the other side of the Solway Firth

The entrance to Maryport Harbour from Maryport basin

Shipping Brow at Maryport

And I was delighted when I got a message from a local artist whose work I admire asking if he could use my photos of Maryport as reference material.

I told him I'd be honoured for him to use any of my photos and am considering going to his next pen and watercolour wash class to learn how to turn my images into works of art - well, paintings. I think “works of art” would be a long way down the road 😊

I also liked a comment a local man left on one of my photos of the Iggesund Paperboard mill at nearby Workington, which can be seen in many of my photos of the coastline.

He said he'd told his granddaughter that it was a cloud factory and the wind turbines were fans to blow the clouds into the right place 😊

A lone fisherman on the shore at Maryport and the "cloud factory"

A redshank in Maryport basin

Meanwhile, I’m becoming very aware that I could do with a longer lens for my camera as my attempts at getting photos of some of the wildlife here have not been so good, like this photo of a redshank in Maryport basin.

I only really took the photo so I could identify it when I got back to the boat, but I was rather disappointed by the quality of the image.

Warmer weather, but not for long…

Last Friday was a beautiful sunny day when Ravensdale’s large windows really came into their own.

We were able to turn the heating off first thing in the morning and the boat stayed lovely and warm all day. The indoor thermometer went up to 34C (93F) in the sun and dropped to 23C (73F) when we moved it to a shadier spot. We didn’t need to put the heating back on until the evening.

Maryport Marina in the sunshine

It was warmer outside on Saturday with temperatures up to almost 11C (52F) but, as so often happens when the weather warms up, it rained for most of the day.

Sunday was sunny and calm and, on Monday we had a mixture of sunshine and clouds with temperatures up to 8.2C (47F).

Tuesday was another lovely sunny day with temperatures up to 6.9C (44F), but there was still a cool wind. The sunset looked promising, but it was not as good as I’d hoped.

Looking across Maryport basin to the old lighthouse

Overnight temperatures only dropped to 3.4C (38F) and we had lovely start to the day on Wednesday complete with a beautiful sunrise. I so wish I’d planned ahead and got up early to capture it, but had to make do with a quick snap taken from Ravensdale’s window.

Wednesday morning's sunrise at Maryport Marina

A closer view of the beautiful sunrise

Wednesday was a much windier day than we had experienced lately with southeasterly winds averaging up to 36mph and gusting to 51mph, but it was relatively warm with temperatures up to 10.3C (50.5F).

Ice cream van on South Quay, Maryport

I saw an ice cream van in Maryport for the first time this year on Wednesday, so I guess that means spring really is on its way 😊

Overnight Wednesday into yesterday (Thursday) there was a good blow with wind speeds up to 36mph, gusting 53mph, and it was fairly warm with a lowest temperature of 6.3C (43F) recorded at 7am.

It was wet and windy first thing yesterday. The rain dried up by lunchtime, but it remained fairly windy with average wind speeds up to 26mph and gusts up to 41mph. The highest daytime temperature was 8.9C (48F) at 3pm and the sunset was considerably better than on Tuesday evening, but still not as colourful as I'd hoped it would be.

Sunset over the shore at Maryport

Maryport lighthouse at sunset with the town in the distance

We had a relatively warm night last night with temperatures only dipping to 6.7C (44F) and this morning it is 8.2C (47F), but it’s not going to last.

The forecast is for much colder weather starting overnight tonight (Friday/Saturday) when the Beast from the East is due to return bringing snow and ice to large areas of the UK.

Here, we’re expecting temperatures down to -2C (28F) in the early hours of tomorrow (Saturday) and only reaching about 2C (36F) during the day. The forecast is for easterly winds of up to 29mph with gusts up to 40mph.

Very similar weather is expected on Sunday, remaining cold for the start of next week so it looks as though we'll have to wait a bit longer for spring to arrive…