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…

Our first liveaboard anniversary and moving for some winter sun

Ravensdale at sea in the Solway Firth

Tomorrow (Saturday) we will have been full-time liveaboards for a year and, it’s true, time really does fly when you’re having fun.

It certainly hasn’t been plain sailing and there have been some pretty choppy times along the way, but we’re still both very happy we decided to take the plunge – not literally of course J

I called my very first blog post, soon after we moved on board, “Mad or What?” and said I wasn’t sure if it was the most exciting of craziest thing we’d ever done – the answer is that it's both.

I resigned from my job as a journalist on a regional daily paper and we sold our house in the Scottish Highlands in October of last year.

We took ownership of our 43ft seagoing cruiser Ravensdale – then called Candlelight - on October 20 and moved onboard on November 4.

It was something we’d both wanted to do for some time. In fact, we sold our house and moved out to Spain in 2004 and almost ended up living on a boat on the Med, but the timing wasn’t right for us and we moved back to the UK.

We’ve never been very good at staying in one place for very long and had moved house many times, frequently joking that our next house should have an engine.

And now it has – two 300hp Volvo Penta engines that will take us anywhere we want to go, diesel fund permitting J

Our first anniversary seemed like a good time to take stock of the biggest move of our lives so I’ve been taking a look back over some of the highlights (and lowlights) of the past 12 months.

November 2016

Ravensdale goes back in the water ready for us to move onboard

Ravensdale had been on the hard standing since we had a survey carried out prior to purchase.

We had a holding tank fitted before she went back in the water at the start of this month and we moved onboard on November 4.

The move was both exciting and a little bit scary and living in a home that was rarely totally still and sometimes rocked quite violently felt a little weird at first.

We soon settled in, but encountered a few problems, including the wifi, which was practically nonexistent, and we had to take our laptops to the marina’s customer lounge to get online.

We also discovered that the new holding tank we’d had fitted before we moved in didn’t take long to fill up if the heads were used as you would use a toilet in a house. The solution was to use the marina facilities most of the time and only use the heads for night times and emergencies.

The other big issue was the lack of storage. We’d got rid of a lot of our belongings when we sold our house, but still found we had way too much stuff to store on a boat. We got rid of even more gear, but have yet to really feel we have solved this problem.

The temperature started to drop and the pontoons were icy some mornings, but the marina staff kindly gritted a route from the boat to the marina facilities, and our diesel heater kept the boat lovely and warm.

December 2016

Ravensdale decked out with Christmas lights

We bought ourselves an early Christmas present of a thick custom-made mattress and a new electric blanket. These, together with a dehumidifier and Dry-Mat, which prevents condensation forming under the mattress, ensured that we always got into a nice warm, dry bed.

The marina also put in a new wifi system, which meant we were able to get wifi, although it was less good at low tide when the boat dropped down behind the harbour wall.

Ravensdale got an early Christmas present when, after months of waiting, an engineer turned up just three days before Christmas to service her two 300hp engines.

We considered going away for the festive season, but decided to spend our first Christmas onboard. We put up a small Christmas tree and a few other decorations inside and strung 800 colourful fairy lights around the guard rails and across the aft deck. We also managed to cook a full turkey dinner in our tiny gas oven.

January 2017

Phil removing the old Eberspacher 7 heater after it broke down

We also decided to spend our first New Year on board. It was a very quiet, but enjoyable way to start the year as we pondered on what 2017 would hold for us. And it wasn’t long before we found out – our super efficient Eberspacher 7 diesel heating system packed up on January 5.

Midwinter must be the worst time for a heating system to break down, especially as we still had no heat at the end of the month after attempts to get our existing heater repaired proved unsuccessful and the first replacement heater we ordered from Germany was lost in transit.

We got by with small electric heaters and our two dehumidifiers, but ended up spending around £50 a week on electricity, which was more than twice the usual figure. We also turned on the gas oven and left the door open to raise the temperature at times.

The coldest temperature we recorded inside the boat was 7C, but we survived.

Meanwhile, the cable on the marina gate snapped and much of the water drained out of the marina. Thankfully we remained afloat – just – but the smell from the stinking mud was awful until it was fixed and normal service was resumed the following day.

We also changed all the lights on the boat for LED bulbs and started studying for our RYA Day Skipper and Yachtmaster Offshore theory qualifications this month.

February 2017

Phil tearing his hair out while we attempt to find homes for all our stuff

Our RYA Yachtmaster Offshore certificates

More than a month after our heating system packed up, the new Webasto 5 heater arrived and was installed restoring some sort of normality to our home. It was so good to be warm again.

I was convinced the heating system packing up for a month in the middle of winter was a test of our commitment to our new liveaboard lifestyle and I reckon we passed with flying colours J

We also successfully completed our RYA Day Skipper and Yachtmaster Offshore courses and were presented with the certificates to prove it.

And our storage wars continued as we pulled everything out of the lockers to sort it – again – and tried to get rid of even more stuff.

When we moved onboard, we rented a 75sqft shore-based storage unit. After much effort, we downsized to a 50sqft unit and then a 25sqft unit. The plan was to get rid of this altogether asap (this has still not been achieved).

March 2017

One of the marina staff pressure washing Ravensdale's hull

We took our first break from our liveaboard lifestyle with a two-week shore-based holiday visiting family in Wales and the south of England. The first night sleeping in a bed that wasn’t being rocked by the waves felt really strange.

We returned to Ravensdale to discover the electricity had gone off just after we left and the freezer was full of stinking rotten meat. We never managed to get rid of the smell in the freezer and ended up having to buy a new one.

Soon after we returned from our holiday, we both successfully completed a day-long VHF Radio Course and passed the VHF Short Range Certificate exam.

And, at the end of the month, we had Ravensdale lifted out of the water onto the hard standing so we could antifoul her hull, check her anodes and give her a good clean up.

We continued to live onboard our boat, which felt rather like living in a weirdly-shaped caravan on stilts, with a spectacular view over the marina.

I set to work on preparing the underwater section of the hull for the antifoul paint and Phil on sanding the gelcoat above the waterline. Our lives became one long round of scrubbing, scraping and sanding.

Our intention was to be out of the water for two to three weeks, but things didn’t quite go to plan...

April 2017

Me sanding the old antifoul paint on Ravensdale's hull

The new logo and Phil painting stripes 

Ravensdale’s beauty treatment continued, with even more, sanding, scraping and polishing, and the removal of her vinyl tape stripes, which were painted back on.

The antifoul paint was applied below the waterline and the prop shafts, propellers and rudders were striped back to the bare metal so the propellers and rudders could be antifouled.

Phil carried out some gelcoat repairs and I chiselled off the raised caulking between the timbers on the aft deck giving us a nice level surface.

We also ordered and applied a new Neptunus trident logo on the bow because the old one was looking very much the worse for wear.

May 2017

Ravensdale on stilts on the hard standing with an impressive set of scaffolding steps

We celebrated our six-month anniversary with Ravensdale still on stilts on the hard standing.

Phil polished the hull until it was shining and I sanded and varnished the coffee table and stools in the saloon.

We also fitted a new depth/sounder log, which involved cutting four holes through the hull – a pretty scary moment J

Meanwhile, Phil was trying to get Ravensdale’s trim tabs working having discovered that they didn’t move at all. We eventually discovered the motor wasn’t working and had to install a new system and new hydraulic rams.

A boating friend taught me to whip ropes and I whipped a new set of ropes for our fenders.

We also made our first trip out of the marina gate into the Solway Firth, but sadly not on Ravensdale. A friend took us out on his yacht to watch Maryport’s annual Trawler Race.

And we took a day off to attend the first day of Windermere Boat Show at Ferry Nab Jetties at Bowness on Windermere.

June 2017

Relaunching Ravensdale after 11 weeks ashore

After various delays, Ravensdale went back in the water on Friday June 9 – about 11 weeks after she was lifted out for two to three weeks J

It was so good to see her back where she belonged and to get rocked to sleep at nights again.

The work continued once we were back in the water, including replacing the domestic water pump after the old one packed up leaving us without an onboard water supply for a couple of days.

Giant jellyfish in Maryport Marina

Ravensdale still wasn’t ready to take out to sea, but another friend offered us a trip out into the Solway Firth on his yacht and we jumped at the opportunity.

A huge jellyfish turned up in the marina – a Rhizostoma pulmo, commonly known as the barrel jellyfish, the dustbin-lid jellyfish or the frilly-mouthed jellyfish.

It was pale pink, with a black lacy looking rim, and measured about 18ins in diameter and around 2ft 6ins in length.

We had some beautiful sunny weather in June and enjoyed soaking up the sun on top of our house J

We also had another trip out to sea on someone else’s yacht and attended the Northern Boat Show in Liverpool.

July 2017  

Phil adjusting Ravensdale's drive belts during the diesel engine course

Our RYA Diesel Engine Course certificates

Me checking the oil during the course

We decided Ravensdale was now seaworthy but decided to wait until after we’d taken the RYA Diesel Engine Course to make sure her engines were in order.

And we were so glad we did because, when the instructor came to our boat to do the course with us, we discovered several problems that could have caused trouble at sea.

These included slack water pump drive belts on the starboard engine, one of which needed replacing, and the fuel return hose on the same engine was perished and could have burst at any time.

The new dinghy we’d ordered at the Northern Boat Show arrived giving us a serviceable tender. The one that was on the boat when we bought it turned out to be suitable for use on inland waterways only – not coastal waters.

We also bought a prawn pot to see what was lurking in the waters beneath our home and started catching small shrimps and crabs, along with the occasional eel, flat fish, young Pollock and even a couple of dogfish.

July brought more sunshine and more sunbathing – who says it always rains in Maryport? All I can say is they have obviously never lived in Fort William J

That said, we were back in Scotland for a week staying in a lovely holiday cottage on the shores of Loch Awe in Argyll and, although we’d planned a break from boats, ended up visiting friends on their boats in Tarbert and hiring a small boat to fish the loch.

The night we got back from our holiday the waste water pump for the basin in the aft heads and shower broke down so we were unable to use them for several days. We immediately ordered a new one, which Phil fitted.

August 2017 

Ravensdale heading out into the Solway Firth for the first time

We carried out the work identified during the diesel engine course and, almost nine months after moving on board, Ravensdale was finally seaworthy, but she came up with yet another excuse not to leave the marina.

While we were waiting for suitable weather to coincide with the tides for our first trip out to sea, the new Nasa Clipper duet combined speed/distance log and echo sounder we fitted while out of the water stopped working.

Phil tried to fix it, but without success so the unit had to be sent back to the manufacturer.

Phil at the helm on our first outing

Meanwhile, we experienced our first Maryport Blues Festival.

We were going to wait until the depth sounder/log was fixed before taking Ravensdale out to sea for the first time, but decided we could do without it if we only went out for a short time around high tide when we could be sure of having plenty of depth beneath us.

And, on August 10 – more than nine months after we bought her – we took her out for her maiden voyage in our ownership and it felt amazing.

Her second outing was on August 22, which was a lovely, calm, sunny day. I still couldn’t quite believe we were floating around on the waves in our house J

Phil later fitted a new in-hull transducer, which gave us a functioning depth sounder again.

September 2017

Phil test driving our new dinghy

Me enjoying a cup of tea at sea

Ravensdale’s third and longest outing to date was an almost three-hour cruise in the Solway Firth on September 2.

Phil tried fishing off the boat for the first time, but had no luck on this occasion.

We also took our new three-man Excel Volante 235 dinghy with a 2.5hp Suzuki outboard motor for a test drive in the marina as we realised we hadn’t used either since we bought them.

I underwent day surgery to have my gallbladder removed this month after discovering the stomach pain I had been suffering was caused by gallstones.

I was a bit concerned about recuperating on a rocking boat, but it was no problem at all. I wasn’t allowed to do any heavy lifting for a fortnight, by which time I was totally back to normal.

We decided not to take Ravensdale out to sea during this period as throwing ropes could have put too much strain on my stomach.

October 2017 

Storm clouds gathering over Maryport Marina before ex-hurricane Ophelia

Calm after the storm

We celebrated the first anniversary of me leaving work, selling our house and buying Ravensdale this month.

Weather forecasters also warned that Maryport was due to be hit by two big storms - ex-hurricane Ophelia and Storm Brian.

The first was pretty dramatic and a former trawler, now used as a liveaboard, which is moored on the harbour wall outside the marina gate, broke her stern line at night. She was tossed around by massive waves while emergency services battled to bring her under control.

However, Storm Brian was no worse than any other period of high winds.

We took Ravensdale out to play in the Solway Firth twice – on October 8 and October 27 – and a friend who was out in their boat at the same time kindly took some lovely photos of her at sea.

Ravensdale out in the Solway Firth on October 8

Enjoying the afternoon sun in the Solway Firth on October 27

November 2017 

The wall plaques say it all

And tomorrow (Saturday) is the big anniversary – a whole year of living on board!

The past week

After Ravensdale’s last trip out to sea we filled her up with diesel – the tank was still almost half full, but she still took 700 litres!

We also moved house – or rather moved our house to a different berth in Maryport Marina.

Ravensdale in our new mooring at Maryport Marina

We were previously moored up alongside the harbour wall on the same side of the marina as the marina office and facilities, which was fine at high tide. However, at low tide, the view from our port side was a seaweed-covered stone wall, which blocked out the light, wifi and mobile signal and adversely affected our TV reception.

This wasn’t so bad in the summer, but as the days get shorter and the sun gets lower in the sky, it means boats along that pontoon are in shadow for much of the day.

We could see it starting to happen and asked if there was any possibility of moving to the other side of the marina.

We are now on a hammerhead, where we have sun for more of the day (when it’s out, of course), more light, a much better view and better reception for wifi, mobile phones and TV.

I’m claiming that we’ve gone on holiday for a bit of winter sun J

Ravensdale's new location on the other side of the marina

On a less happy note, we discovered we need to buy two new batteries after the engines failed to start again when we filled up with diesel following our last trip out to sea.

Phil used the generator to start the engines and, after carrying out some tests, he confirmed the batteries were finished so our next big purchase will be two new ones.

I think Ravensdale will have to consider them an early Christmas present J