Ravensdale is seaworthy again and ready for action

Ravensdale's engine room - the heat exchanger pipe that held things up is top left

Three weeks after we removed the heat exchanger and intercooler from Ravensdale’s port engine for cleaning, she’s now up and running again.

But Phil only completed the job yesterday (Thursday), so we haven’t had a chance to take her out to sea yet.

Meanwhile, he's been cleaning her decks and hull again to keep her shipshape.

Phil pressure-washing Ravensdale's foredeck

He has also replaced the window seals in the saloon and we’ve made a couple of purchases that will improve our liveaboard experience.

And otter watching - or rather watching for otters - has become our latest pastime.

Port engine heat exchanger is working again

Both Ravensdale’s engines are now in full working order so we can take her out to sea whenever we want.

She was out of commission while the heat exchanger and intercooler on her port engine were removed and cleaned.

Bad weather causing the boat to rock fairly violently delayed work in the engine room, then we had to wait for the parts to come back after we sent them away for cleaning.

We collected them and Phil refitted them over a week ago.

The perished seals that needed replacing

However, we then discovered that the seals attaching a pipe to the heat exchanger were perished causing a leak when the engine was running.

We ordered the parts, but the Easter break meant we had to wait longer than usual for delivery.

Phil fitted them yesterday (Thursday) and the engine is running perfectly while alongside.

We’re now waiting for good weather to coincide with the marina gates being open at a suitable time of day to take Ravensdale out into the Solway Firth to check both her 300hp Volvo Penta engines work equally well at sea.

Phil refitting the pipe to the heat exchanger

The same work was carried out to her starboard engine earlier this year to cure an overheating problem.

After that job was completed, we discovered the port engine was also running hotter than it should have been hence the latest project.

Replacing window seals

The Beast from the East at the end of February and beginning of March revealed a new problem of which we had been previously unaware.

We discovered the shelf along the top of the cupboards on the port side of the saloon was getting wet. On investigation, we could see fine snow blowing in down the join between the fixed window and the one that slides open.

We then realised that the seal on that window was so badly worn that a small gap had opened up and the northerly wind was blowing the snow in through it.

We were unable to find exactly the right seals so ordered the nearest we could find. Sadly, they didn’t fit properly, so Phil filled the gap with black Sikaflex. He then placed the bought seal on top of the sealant and we didn’t touch the window until it had set.

Phil filling the gap behind the window seal with sealant

Phil fitting the new window seal

He did the same thing with the matching window on the starboard side.

And both now seem to be working perfectly.

The windows still open and close and, unlike before, you cannot feel any draft if you hold a hand close to either of the seals when they're closed.

Hopefully, we won’t get any more snow coming in either 😊

Re-carpeting the galley

Phil fitting the new carpet

This week, we bought and fitted a new carpet in the galley to replace the old one that had become badly marked and was fraying at the edges.

It wasn’t in great condition when we bought the boat. We'd tried cleaning it with carpet cleaner, which improved the look of it a bit, but I always felt it let the boat down.

Recently, it was looking even worse, so we went and bought a remnant in a similar colour to the rest of the carpet on the boat.

Although the galley floor is a very small area, it's an awkward shape, so Phil cut the new carpet to fit using the one we'd removed as a template and he’s done a great job.

The newly fitted galley carpet

New aft deck furniture

All last summer, and the warmer sunnier days during the rest of the year, we’ve wished we had a table and chairs on Ravensdale’s aft deck.

And, at long last, we’ve got around to doing something about it.

Our local B&Q DIY store gives pensioners a 10% discount on Wednesdays, so I persuaded Phil to sign up for the scheme.

He was delighted when he was asked for proof that he was over 60, especially when he’s a good few years past that milestone birthday 😊

New table and chairs on Ravensdale's aft deck

Me enjoying a coffee on our new aft deck furniture

And, on Wednesday of this week, we bought a folding table and chairs made of acacia - a dense, durable hardwood that can withstand the elements and is often used in boat building. It's also a sustainable wood making it an eco-friendly choice.

It was pouring with rain on Wednesday when we made the purchase, so we waited until yesterday (Thursday), when the sun came out, and assembled them on our aft deck in the sunshine.

It was great being able to sit out and have our coffee in a civilised fashion, rather than just perching on the aft deck lockers.

Caravan site reopens

The Harbourside Caravan Park next to Maryport Marina

The nearby caravan site, which is run by the marina and shares the marina facilities, opened for the 2018 season on Good Friday.

The first two camper vans arrived during the afternoon and it was very busy over the Easter weekend.

It can accommodate 10 caravans or campervans and was almost full on Saturday and Sunday.

We’re obviously pleased to see it doing well for the marina, but it means the toilets, showers and laundry are busier than during the winter months, which can be a bit of a pain.

The caravan park was created last year, but no new facilities were provided for it.

Ex trawler towed away

A former trawler that was moored up in Maryport Basin, just outside the marina gate, was towed away in the early hours of Sunday morning.

The boat, called Samenwerking, is the home of a couple and their four dogs.

Petronella alongside Samenwerking before towing the former trawler to Scotland

It was due to leave on the high tide around midday on Saturday, but it was too windy, so it left on the next high tide, just after midnight on Sunday morning.

We went down to the far end of the marina to watch it go – and to take photos, of course 😊

The two boats preparing to leave Maryport

The former trawler beside Maryport Pier on its way out into the Solway Firth

She is now settled in her new home at Palnackie in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland.

Marina wildlife

We’re still waiting for the swans and the little black and white magpie duck to return to the marina.

However, a pair of mallards have been in looking for food, so I didn’t disappoint them 😊

The ducks that paid us a visit yesterday (Thursday) afternoon 

Meanwhile, we were delighted to spot a pair of otters playing in the marina on Tuesday evening.

We watched them through our binoculars from Ravensdale’s foredeck and I could clearly see that there were two of them.

They then moved around out of view, so I got my camera and we walked out along the next pontoon to look for them.

We were creeping along the pontoon as quietly as we could when there was a huge splash right next to me and I nearly jumped out of my skin. Just as well I wasn’t too close to the edge or I might have ended up in the water with them 😊

I’m sure it was at least one of the otters, but we never saw them again.

We’re now keeping an eye out for them and I’m hoping to get a photo asap.

Photography - fishing boats in Maryport Harbour

Easter Sunday started out as a beautiful sunny day and I couldn't resist taking a walk around the harbour with my camera while Phil pressure-washed the boat.

I came home with literally hundreds of photos of the colourful fishing boats here. Sadly, I didn't manage to get all their names so I've had to use their numbers for the captions on some of them. 

Destiny - one of the fishing boat in Maryport Harbour

Silver Fern - another of the local fishing boats

Sincerity and Our James

Winsome and RI475

BH44 and CT20

MT123 and E50

Weather round-up

The past week has been generally a little warmer than previous weeks which, as usual, meant more rain, coupled with high winds.

But we’ve also had a couple of lovely sunny, spring-like days.

We had rain overnight Friday/Saturday and it was very windy on Saturday morning.

This coincided with a fairly high tide of 8.8m – the highest we’ve seen since we’ve been in Maryport, Cumbria, was just over 9.2m.

Maryport Marina at high tide on Saturday

Sunday was much calmer, with sunshine, blue skies and fluffy white clouds in the morning. However, it clouded over soon after lunchtime and a cold wind blew up later in the afternoon.

Fluffy white clouds over Maryport Harbour on Easter Sunday

The wind dropped off overnight but it remained quite cool. The lowest temperature recorded during the night was 2.2C (36F) at 6am.

Monday was cold, wet and windy. The boat was rocking well, particularly when the marina gate was open. The highest temperature recorded locally during the day was just 3.6C (38F), with an easterly wind averaging up to 22mph and gusting to 33mph.

I was going to cut Phil’s hair that day but had to put it off as the boat was rocking too much, so spent most of the day sorting through and processing photos I’d taken over the preceding days.

We woke up to pouring rain on Tuesday morning, which continued until the afternoon. The sun then came out and the temperature rose to a much more pleasant 9.3C (49F), although it remained pretty windy, with average speeds of up to 21mph, gusting 31mph.

The view through Ravensdale's saloon window on Tuesday morning

Overnight Tuesday/Wednesday was a mild night, with temperatures only dropping to 5.7C (42F).

The strangest thing on Wednesday was the wind, which had been coming from the south overnight. Up until 3am, we had a southerly wind averaging up to 14mph and, by 11am, it had turned right around to a northerly wind. The highest average wind speed recorded during the day was 31mph, gusting to 41mph.

Overnight Wednesday into yesterday (Thursday) was much colder, with the temperature going down to 0.9C (33F), and the wind dropped considerably to 5mph by 6am.

This was followed by a beautiful sunny day with very little wind – just right for trying out our new table and chairs on Ravensdale’s aft deck.

Maryport in the sunshine yesterday (Thursday)

Last night was fairly mild, with the temperature dipping to 5.4C (39F) just before dawn.

This morning (Friday) and much

Engine and electrical problems, octopuses, sunrises and a rainbow

Phil working on the heat exchanger on Ravensdale's aft deck

Ravensdale is out of action until after Easter due to a discovery Phil made while replacing the heat exchanger on her port engine.

It’s also been a frustrating week on the electrical front after a problem at the 240V fuse box left us without hot water and with no power to two sockets, including the one used to heat the en suite head.

On a lighter note, we made our first delivery of crabs for the octopuses at The Aquarium on the harbourside in Maryport, Cumbria, UK, this week.

And we were rewarded with a free visit to the Aquarium 😊

Return of the heat exchanger

We decided the heat exchanger and intercooler on Ravensdale’s port engine should be cleaned after this work was carried out to her starboard engine to cure an overheating problem.

On that occasion, we asked a local man called Norman, who looks after his family’s fishing boats, to do the job.

This time, Phil felt able to tackle some of it himself. He removed the heat exchanger and intercooler from the 300hp Volvo Penta engine and we took them to Norman for cleaning.

Phil preparing to refit the intercooler

Meanwhile, we ordered new thermostats for the port engine as the ones he removed didn’t appear to be working.

Me cutting a gasket for the intercooler

We collected the heat exchanger and intercooler from Norman on Saturday and Phil refitted them the following day after I’d cut some new gaskets for the intercooler using the gasket paper we'd ordered as spares after the last engine was done. He also fitted the new thermostats.

He then tried starting the engine and was delighted to see a good flow of water coming out of the exhaust outlet.

However, he was less pleased to find that there was also water flowing into the engine room bilges because one of the seals on the heat exchanger was leaking, so he took it off again and I cut a new gasket for it.

He put it back on, started the engine again only to discover another leak.

This time water was leaking from a pipe joint on the heat exchanger.

Removing the pipe again revealed that the rubber seals at both ends of the pipe were perished.

Phil working on the heat exchanger in the engine room

We think removing the pipe caused the seals to break up as it looked as though it hadn’t been touched for a very long time, but the pipe had to be removed to take off the heat exchanger.

We ordered new seals, but the company didn’t have them in stock so there’s no way we’re going to get them until after Easter.

This means Ravensdale won’t be going anywhere anytime soon, but we both agree that it’s better to discover and sort all these problems before we take her out to sea again.

Thankfully it doesn’t look as though the weather’s going to be that good for the next few days, so we probably wouldn’t have wanted to go anywhere anyway.

Storage wars

The contents of the saloon cupboards waiting to be neatly stowed away

One of the jobs I tackled this week was sorting the contents of the cupboards along the port side of the saloon.

Our newly tidied cupboards

I pulled out all the stuff that had been randomly pushed into the shelving, sorting it into new plastic storage boxes, which I then labelled.

Hopefully, it will be so much easier to find things in them in future and pulling something out from the bottom won’t result in further items falling from the spaces into which they had been wedged 😊

I wish I’d thought to take a photo of the mess that was in the cupboards before I started, but I didn’t so you’ll just have to take my word for it that it really is so much better now 😊

Electrickery

While I was tidying the cupboards in the saloon, Phil decided to remove a double socket that was inside one of the lower cupboards and never used.

Removing the socket involved taking a cable out of the 240V fuse box.

Phil removing the unused double socket

He used the now redundant double socket to replace another one in the same room that hasn’t been working properly for some time.

Only one side of it was working and it’s in an important location so we really needed to be able to connect two plugs at the same time.

However, changing the socket somehow stopped it working altogether. It also knocked out the power to the water heater and the socket in the en suite head for our bedroom, which provides the power for the space heater.

He called our marine electrician, who was unable to get here until Friday.

In the meantime, we started the starboard engine or boiled a kettle to provide us with hot water.

The following day, Phil decided to have another go at getting to the root of the problem and started trying to trace wires from the fuse box and the sockets that were out of action, both of which proved impossible due to the crazy wiring system on Ravensdale.

Phil studying the 240V fuse box

It’s impossible to see where the wires go from the fuse box as they come down over the diesel tank in the engine room and immediately disappear into trunking that is out of reach.

Further investigations at the socket revealed that the positive and earth wires were obviously connected at the fuse box, but the negative side was not. He then returned to the fuse box to take another look and was over the moon when he discovered the cause of the problem.

The cable going into the fuse box had somehow got pushed too far in, presumably while removing the cable for the cupboard socket, so the screw was doing up on the plastic covering rather than bare wire.

And I was delighted that normal service was resumed after having to wash in tepid water on Wednesday morning.


Crabs, octopuses and other marine life

The prawn pot that we drop from Ravensdale’s bow hasn’t been catching much in recent months, but we've found more crabs in there over the past week and, on Tuesday, we discovered we'd caught a dogfish as well.

Phil with the dogfish that found its way into our prawn pot

Some of the crabs we took to The Aquarium

We released the dogfish but kept the crabs as we'd said we would save them for the octopuses at The Aquarium.

As we were having difficulty collecting a bucketful, we asked the staff at The Aquarium if they wanted what we had so far and were told to bring them over.

We took them a bucket containing 13 crabs and they let us in to have a look around.

I was like a kid in a sweetshop.

I totally loved the displays and suddenly realised I was standing on a step meant for small children to get a better look at the rays and dogfish in a pond that’s made to look like Maryport harbour.

The dogfish and ray pond in front of a photograph of Maryport

A notice nearby said it was OK to touch the rays, so I just had to try it and discovered their skin to be very rough.

One of the octopuses at The Aquarium

All the displays were fascinating, but I especially liked the seahorses, the jellyfish and the conger eels, which were hiding in holes in rocks with their enormous heads poking out watching us watching them 😊

I can’t believe we’ve been here for almost 17 months and had not been to see the displays in the Aquarium until now despite visiting the building several times a week for coffee, lunch or breakfast and to buy bait from the onsite fishing tackle shop.

We were told that we can have another look when we bring more crabs for the octopuses, so the pot is down and I’m hoping it will fill up very soon.

I will definitely take my camera with me next time as the images I took on my mobile phone really aren’t up to much, but that isn’t going to stop me sharing a few more of them here 😊

Jellyfish

Conger eel

Sea anemones

Thornback ray

Another tank of sea anemones

Seahorses at The Aquarium

Sunrises, sunsets and a rainbow

I’ve made a concerted effort to get out in time for the sunrise this week.

My first attempt was on Monday when sunrise was at 7.02am.

A fishing boat in Maryport harbour

Reflections on the still waters of Maryport harbour at sunrise

And I was up and out for the sunrise again yesterday (Thursday) when it was at 6.54am.

Maryport lighthouse at sunrise

Maryport pier at sunrise

Sunrise over the Solway Firth

Sadly, on neither occasion did I get the full-blown sunrise I was hoping for, but at least there was a bit of colour to the sky.

I decided this week was my best chance of catching a sunrise without having to get up too early thanks to the clocks going forward at the weekend for British Summer Time (BST).

I managed to capture a half decent sunset over the marina on Sunday evening as, by the time I saw the sky changing colour, it was too late to go any further afield, so I grabbed a few snaps from Ravensdale’s aft deck and our pontoon.

Sunset over Maryport Marina

Sunset from Ravensdale's aft deck

And on Wednesday I dived out to photograph a rainbow that I spotted from the boat. Again, I had no time to go to a better location so just had to grab what I could get.

Rainbow over Maryport Marina

Sunshine, showers and a chilly wind

This week has been another mixed bag where the weather is concerned.

On the good days, it has felt decidedly spring-like and, on Monday, I headed out for a walk in a short-sleeved T-shirt for the first time this year.

Colourful graffiti on the ruins of an old building next to Maryport lighthouse

We haven’t needed to put our heater on by day for most of the past week as the sun shining through Ravensdale’s large windows has kept the boat lovely and warm, even with the door wide open at times.

Saturday, Sunday and Monday were all lovely sunny days with very little wind. Just the sort of days that would normally have us thinking about heading out to sea, but this week it was not to be.

A calm, sunny day on the beach at Maryport with the Scottish hills in the distance

Maryport lighthouse in the sunshine

The highest temperature recorded locally on those three days was 7.5C (45F), but it felt much warmer and we enjoyed coffee breaks on Ravensdale’s aft deck in the sunshine.

It was still cold overnight on Sunday/Monday with the temperature dropping to 0.5C (32F) and it rained overnight on Monday/Tuesday.

Tuesday was a less pleasant day. It was overcast most of the day, with brief showers and average wind speeds of up to 22mph, gusting to 30mph.

A heavy sky over Maryport Marina

The temperature went up to a daytime high of 7.6C (46F), but the westerly and northwesterly winds made it feel cooler.

We had rain overnight and Wednesday morning was overcast with occasional spits and spots of rain. The sun came out towards lunchtime with the temperature rising to 6.3C (43F). It felt cool but not cold.

Overnight Wednesday/yesterday (Thursday) was less cold than of late with temperatures falling to just 1.9C (35F) in the early hours of the morning.

Early morning light on Maryport pier

During the morning, we had sunny intervals with the odd light shower and the afternoon was cloudy with further showers.

The top temperature was 8.5C (47F), with a 16mph south-easterly wind. Today (Friday) is a lot cooler with the temperature so far peaking at 5.3C (41F) in a cool easterly wind.

Ravensdale early yesterday morning