A mysterious noise and a nasty surprise

Preparing for the new trim tab system to arrive

A mysterious noise coming from the galley area of Ravensdale has been puzzling us for the past couple of weeks.

We have both spent time trying to identify its source.

And we had worked out that we only heard it when it was windy outside.

But we could not find anything that could be causing it.

The mystery was solved when Phil spotted that the new log he had fitted was registering a speed despite the fact the boat is currently on stilts on dry land and therefore very definitely not moving.

The new log registers 3 knots while the boat is standing still

The highest speed he saw it register was 4 knots (nautical miles per hour). The highest it reached once I had my phone at the ready to take a photo was 3 knots.

The penny then dropped. The noise we were hearing was the new paddle wheel he had fitted on the underside of the hull in the galley area being blown around by the wind.

The new paddle wheel underneath the hull

Meanwhile, a friend recently said my blog seemed to prove that boating was “equivalent to standing in a cold shower ripping up tenners” and the past week seems to have proved him right.

Well, not so much the bit about standing in a cold shower as the boat is warm and dry and the marina showers are lovely and hot, but definitely the bit about ripping up tenners - or maybe notes of a higher denomination would be more appropriate :-)

This week we had a nasty surprise regarding the trim tabs that have been holding up our return to the water for the past few weeks.

The dead trim tab motor

We had hoped they were getting fixed but it now turns out that the motor is not repairable as the parts are no longer available so we have had to scrap it and buy a whole new system.

Two guys from Forth Engineering at Maryport turned up at the door of our boat with the bad news on Thursday.

And, despite the fact they were unable to help on this occasion, we would have no hesitation in recommending them to anyone. They have spent hours desperately trying to track down the parts for us, without success, and made a total of four visits to our boat while trying to come up with a solution, but would not take a penny for their efforts.

We ordered the new trim tab system, including four new rams, the motor, two console switches (one for the saloon console and one for the fly bridge) and all the relevant cables, late on Thursday and it arrived this afternoon.

So our re-launch date is now in Phil’s hands - no pressure there then J

While waiting for the new kit to arrive, he stripped out the old system.

Phil removes the old trim tab rams

Phil removed the old rams that were supposed to make the trim tabs move up and down and made good the holes they had left in the hull by filling them with fibreglass, fibreglassing over the areas where they had been then putting a new coat of gelcoat over the top.

Applying gelcoat on top of the fibreglass covering the holes where the old rams had been

He is planning to start work on the refit tomorrow and is anticipating the biggest problem being the wiring. The cables need to go from the motor, which will be fitted on the transom under our bed in the stern cabin, through to the switches on the console at the forward end of the saloon and up on the fly bridge when there is no obvious or easy route for them to follow.

Our newly whipped fender ropes

Close-up of my whipping

I have been busy finishing off cleaning and polishing all the stainless steel on the boat with chrome cleaner and whipping the new ropes we have bought for our fenders.

Sadly my lesson in whipping from our friend did not help as he showed me how to whip braid ropes and we bought three strand rope for the job.

So I followed a really simple video for sailmaker’s whipping that I found on YouTube.

There were seven ropes to do, which meant I had 14 ends to whip.

My plan was to do half of them at one sitting and the other half another time as I thought pulling the whipping twine tight would make my fingers sore. And I was right, it did, but once I was half way through the task I just wanted to get it finished.

The next new skill I am planning to learn is splicing and Reg, who is the marina foreman, has offered to give us a lesson on Wednesday so I’m looking forward to that.

In the meantime, I've been out and about with my camera again, trying to get some different photos of Maryport. 

The blue bridge across the River Ellon to Mote Hill, Maryport

A wide view of Maryport from Mote Hill

River Ellon from Mote Hill

Trim tabs, sunshine and seagulls

Ravensdale's troublesome trim tabs

Ravensdale’s relaunch has moved a step closer thanks to the perseverance of the engineering firm that is trying to mend her trim tabs.

It was beginning to look as though Forth Engineering of Maryport wouldn’t be able to source the parts needed because the company that made the motor had gone out of business, but after much calling around, they tell us they have ordered the parts, which should arrive early next week.

And they’re hoping to come and fit them on Tuesday.

It will then remain to be seen whether the rams on the trim tabs are working, but hopefully that will be less difficult to sort if they need to be serviced or replaced.

Trim tabs are movable flat plates connected to the stern of a boat, used to control the angle of the boat in the water without the need for constant manual adjustment of the controls.

When we bought the boat they were both set at different angles. We questioned this and were told that they were set for the boat and didn’t need changing and rather naively we accepted this explanation.

However, when we got Ravensdale out of the water at the end of March for antifouling, cleaning and a few minor (or so we thought) repairs, we discovered that they didn’t work at all.

The port trim tab moved when the controls on the console were operated, but the starboard one refused to budge.

Phil checking the hydraulics on the trim tabs through an inspection panel under our bed 

Initially, Phil was trying to sort them himself, but we eventually decided to get them serviced and asked Forth Engineering to take a look.

Meanwhile the marina’s boat hoist has been out of action after a problem occurred while it was lifting a large concrete boat out of the water at the start of this month.

The hoist lifts up to 25 tonne and the vessel weighed less than 20 tonnes so it should have been easily able to take its weight. Hydraulic experts decided it may have an “intermittent fault with a winch valve” so the relevant parts had to be changed before it could be used for large vessels again.

Ravensdale in the hoist when she was lifted out of the water

However this has now been fixed so as soon as Ravensdale is ready they will be able to put her back in the water.

We decided to use the extra time out on the hard standing to do lots of jobs that we had intended to leave until we were back in the water.

And we've had some beautiful weather for getting the outside tasks done. We had about a week of wall-to-wall sunshine, albeit with some pretty chilly wind, but the rain arrived yesterday.

In fact, it was more comfortable outdoors than in as all the windows around the main saloon behave rather like a greenhouse. One day when we left the windows closed while out shopping we returned to find the temperature inside the boat had gone up to 32C with the heating switched off.

Polishing one of the aft deck lockers in the sunshine

The new anchor connector

My outdoor jobs have included using rubbing compound on the lockers on the aft deck before polishing and waxing them and cleaning the chrome guardrails and stanchions.

And Phil has fitted a new anchor connector to allow smooth launching and retrieval of the anchor.

He has also been working on the frame finishing trim around the windows. Just about every window had gaps where the trim was too short so he has been using the existing trim to fill the gaps and we've ordered new trim to fill in the missing sections.

Removing the old frame finishing trim

Phil has also fixed “Lift here” stickers at the points where the boat slings should be located during lifting operations and “Do not lift here” stickers above the new transducer and paddle wheel for the log to save them from damage.

One of the new "Lift here" stickers

One strange thing about living on a boat is not having a shed or workshop to work in, which means we have to find other places to carry out jobs that would normally have been done in the shed.

Below is a photo of Phil using the worktop in the galley for a spot of soldering.

The galley worktop becomes an indoor work bench

The worktop being used for its proper purpose

Yesterday we decided to take a complete break from working on the boat and headed off to the Lake District for the first day of Windermere Boat Show at Ferry Nab Jetties at Bowness on Windermere.

Visitors to Windermere Boat Show

A quiet start to the show

Phil admires a new boat that at £312,866 is well out of our league

It was fairly quiet while we were there, but the event is only in its second year and we were told that Friday was also the quietest day last year.

It was interesting to look at some of the new boats on show even though we would never be able to afford them.

But more interesting to us were the stalls manned by companies providing services to boat owners, such as canopies and upholstery, electronic gadgets and electrical rewiring, new and used tenders and local marinas.

While we were at the boat show the new ropes we had ordered for our fenders arrived so it looks as though my next job will be practising my newly acquired whipping skills once Phil has cut them to length with our new rope seal hot knife.

Seagulls nesting on a nearby cruiser

In the meantime, it seems that a pair of seagulls have built a nest on the flybridge of one of the other cruisers on the hard standing here.