Dinghy McDingface has a new look

In 2016, back in New Zealand, we replaced Maunie's old and leaking dinghy with a brand new one - a French-made Zodiac. This was about the time of the Boaty McBoatface story (where the British Antarctic Survey rashly and hilariously decided to let the British Public vote for a name for its new exploration vessel that subsequently became the Sir David Attenborough), so Maunie's new boat became Dinghy McDingface, or DMD for short.

The original story of the launch can be found here

Though the boat worked really well we soon began to realise that its build quality wasn't great and the PVC tubes began to degrade quite alarmingly in the fierce Pacific sunshine. Not quite as alarmingly as the storage cover, though, which seemed to dissolve before our eyes under the glare of UV light, so a complaint to Zodiac resulted in their sending us a replacement which we then covered with Sunbrella acrylic to make it last.

Making a new cover for the cover in Australia

By the end of last year the boat was no longer useable, leaking both water and air and with the safety barrier between the two air chambers leaking as well. Clearly it was time for a change but our dilemma was that the hard-hull, folding-transom design was just perfect for Maunie's foredeck and, having gone to all the effort of making the cover, it would be a waste, not to mention an environmental disaster, to throw it all away.

Thankfully there's a brilliant business near Dartmouth called Tilley Inflatables which specialises in re-tubing and repairing inflatables. Mike Tilley has taken the business on from his father and he had a good look at the boat, made a few "mmm, looks tricky" noises but agreed that the old tubes were beyond repair and he could replace them in Hypalon - a much higher quality material far more resistant to UV than PVC. It wasn't a cheap option - costing more than a brand new Zodiac - but we decided to go for the re-build. It gave us the option to move to a more, ahem, eye-catching colour scheme and Mike did some great work to re-position the lifting handles which, in the original design, were stupidly placed right where the tubes folded so were coming unstuck. We also cleaned up the design, to remove unnecessary extra handles and fittings, and the old tubes could be sent to be recycled.

Yesterday Graham collected it and launched at Darthaven.

A sneaky reveal as it's unpacked 

No chance of not spotting that on a crowded pontoon!

New look, vs the original, shown below on its launch day:

The dusty cover needs a bit of a clean but DMD is now reunited with the mothership

We are really pleased with how it's worked and it's great to know that we have given the boat a new (and hopefully long) life. 

Big boats but very little wind

The dominant high pressure may be bringing us hot, dry weather but it also means that there is precious little wind to be found just at the moment. However, we've just had a lovely long weekend aboard Maunie and a few vessels that we met certainly made things interesting, even if the sailing was pretty tame.

This was the view on the River Dart on Thursday evening - a fleet of 'traditional' superyachts anchored after the first leg of a race series called the Richard Mille Cup. Richard Mille (I had to look this up) is a brand of designer watches for people who think it's socially acceptable casually to strap a timepiece that costs more than a boat to their wrists. More than a very flash boat, actually; the cheapest model comes in at a mere $84,000 and most sell for about $200,000.

Anyway, forgetting the social injustices of superyachts and their owners for a moment; the star of the show was Adix, a 286 footer built in 1984, currently valued at about $25M and owned by a Spanish Billionaire Jaime Botin, Chairman of Groupo Santander. Senor Botin is clearly a man of taste to buy such a yacht but in 2020 he was charged and sentenced to 18 months in jail after attempting to smuggle a Picasso painting out of Spain aboard the boat. Sorry, I forgot to forget the social injustices of superyachts and their owners for a moment there. Anyway this is a photo from Superyacht Times of Adix, enjoying more wind that she did this week.

Back aboard the more modestly priced Maunie, we had a motor passage in calm waters west past Salcombe then a lovely couple of hours with the Parasailor flying.

We arrived at the River Yealm mid-afternoon and enjoyed a relaxed night on the visitors' pontoon, chatting to the crews of neighbouring yachts. As the light was beginning to fail, a charter yacht with a father and his two teenage kids aboard rafted alongside us; unfortunately when they left at 08.00 the following morning the fast-running current got the better of their inexperience and they nearly wrapped their boat around Maunie's stern. Thankfully there was no damage, apart from their pride, but it very nearly went very wrong indeed.

We waited for favourable tide to help us back towards Dartmouth so spend the rest of the morning relaxing and doing a few little jobs that we somehow never seem to get around to. Vital things, like relabelling the halyard clutches so that crews unfamiliar with the boat can find the right rope easily.

Nautical terms that all mean something important!

Unfortunately our return passage was all under engine as the wind never rose more than about 4 knots. At least we had about 2 knots of favourable tide scooting us around Start Point and, as we headed in towards the Dart, we had another Big and Expensive Vessel encounter:

This is a ship called The World where wealthy folk who don't buy superyachts instead buy a suite on board and then join the ship wherever, and for as long, as they fancy. We first saw her in Sydney Harbour and then again in Falmouth where she was temporarily laid up during the Covid crisis.

Overall, a very pleasant weekend on the water - just hope for some wind next time!

 

  

The 2023 season begins

 After the usual fun of winter maintenance jobs (which, to be fair, were fewer than in previous years), we had a very smooth relaunch on the 24th April. It was an early start to catch the tide but Maunie was the first boat in (of about 5 that morning) and we had glorious, if chilly, sunshine.

There's a short video of it all here: https://youtu.be/z-SK36Y2I_E

Since then, we've been aboard for a couple of long weekends; we had a good shakedown sail a couple of weeks ago and, today, introduced the next generation of Maunie crew to the delights of messing about on the River Dart. Our niece Amy, herself once a regular crew in our various boats from the age of about nine and into her late teens, is now all grown up with two young boys of her own (it makes us feel old, but there we are). She and her husband Joe are currently on holiday with her parents only a few miles from Dartmouth, so they joined us aboard for a gentle motor up the the river for a picnic lunch in the cockpit at Dittisham.

They arrived in style on the Dart Valley steam train and, once Benjamin (aged 3) got over the initial fears over the impending life as cabin boy, we had a lovely day together. 

 Meanwhile Charlie, aged just 6 months, approved of the sleeping arrangements in the mid-cabin :

The forecast looks very settled for the next couple of days but that means precious little wind. We might therefore partake in the delights of the Dartmouth Music Festival! Whatever happens, it's just great to be back afloat.

Using the right size hammer

With Maunie safely ashore in Totnes, sheltering from the rain under her winter covers, we are able to go down to do a few winter maintenance jobs. The latest one tested Graham's nerve, it must be said.

Maunie's four-cylinder Yanmar diesel engine is, like the majority of boat motors, cooled indirectly. What this means is that the engine has a fresh water (with added antifreeze) cooling circuit just like that of a car. However, rather than using a radiator, there's a heat-exchanger that pumps cold sea water through bronze tubes that pass though the coolant in a header tank on the top of the engine. 

The coolant header tank is at the very bottom of this photo

Over time the heat exchanger tubes can become clogged with encrusted salt and other debris, reducing its efficiency and, possibly, resulting in the engine overheating. It was time to take it apart for a good clean and, initially, the process seemed to be going pretty well. I had to remove the exhaust mixer elbow first, to allow access to the aft end cap and to allow the tube-stack to be pulled out. The exhaust elbow and end cap came off without a fight and it was good to find that the bore of the exhaust was nice and clean (they can get a build up of coke which restricts the gas flow).

Flow and return sea water pipes removed at the back of the heat exchanger

The end cap removed, revealing a bit of crud in the tubes

However, this was a boat job so, of course, things then got tricky. The cap at the forward end of the tubes also had to be removed to allow me to prise out both O-rings to allow the tube-stack to slide out. Unfortunately, it showed no sign of shifting once the bolts were removed. I was nervous about applying too much force and possibly breaking something expensive so chatted to the resident engine specialist, Steve, at New Wave Engineering, who has come to our assistance in the past. He climbed aboard and was surprised that the end cap was stuck. However, armed with knowledge and experience, he selected a big hammer and a steel drift and whacked it far harder that I would have dared; thankfully, the recalcitrant cap flew off, undamaged.

With both caps and O-rings removed, the tube stack slid out easily

I had read that brick cleaner (a fairly aggressive acid) or vinegar were both options to soak the tubes in order to clean them but Steve has an ultrasonic cleaner in his workshop which he prefers for the task so offered that as an option.

After a couple of cleaning cycles, the tube stack yields all its hidden bits of scale and muck

The ultrasonic cleaner also removed all the paint from the caps so Steve primed them, ready for a topcoat of Yanmar grey

As good as new

We've bought new O-rings and gaskets so next time we'll refit the heat exchanger and refill the coolant circuit. It's good to know that this job is done and we should be good for another few years. On to the next job on the list!

The new instrument project is completed!

We are very pleased to report that the rewiring and chaos is over with! Here are some short videos of it all:

This is the second installment of the video story, as we remove the remaining cables and start to add the new network instruments:  https://youtu.be/WuF3mtxmMPA

and here's the final bit of the installation https://youtu.be/cgdZEfe70gU

We finally took Maunie out for a sea-trial at the weekend and were delighted that everything worked as it should. Unfortunately there was no wind at all but the calm sea and sunshine were perfect conditions for testing. https://youtu.be/b-cV8XV-t_E

We'll hope to get a final few days of sailing, weather permitting, before the end of the month. We'll be hauling out at Baltic Wharf in Totnes again this winter so she'll be snug under her winter cover and we'll be able to continue with a few maintenance jobs. Hopefully not too many!

Taking the boat apart and sailing something rather bigger.

 We've bitten the bullet and decided that now's the time to upgrade our 25-year-old Autohelm navigation instruments, the ones that show us speed, depth, wind speed and direction, and so on.

The old kit was still working fine, with the odd hiccup, but it operates on a different language than that used by the chart plotter and autopilot, so requires some electronic trickery to translate between the two systems. We had realised for a while that, at some stage, we'd need to upgrade and recent galloping inflation in the electronics supply-chain finally made up our minds for us - we needed to order the new Raymarine equipment before the 1st of September to beat price increases of up to 35% on some items!

The next challenge was getting someone to fit the kit. All the local experts were busy (and, of course, expensive) so we started to think about tackling the project as a DIY job. Luckily, one local marine electrician could spare us an hour to come aboard to go through the plans; an hour of his time was money well spent to be sure we were on the right track and he took Graham's hand-drawn diagram and uprated it to something much more professional!

Graham's sketch - the red dots are new bits of kit

The professional version

Having ordered all the components, it was simply a matter of removing the old instruments and wiring to be ready to fit the new. It wasn't simple, of course!

Which of these cables needs to be removed?!

Here's a short video of the first stage of the process:

https://youtu.be/pYud5LccPlo

It was all a bit challenging but we are making progress. There'll be another update shortly as we start putting all the new kit into place.

Meanwhile, as a break from all the wiring, Graham has just been sailing on something altogether bigger - a 72' Global Challenge yacht of the type that we both raced around Britain. Scarily, it's 19 years since the Round Britain Challenge, so the opportunity to sail aboard the Challenge Wales yacht was something to jump at and Graham has now volunteered as a crew member for the charity, which focuses on delivering team working skills to 14-25 year olds. Sunday's sail was a chance to meet the team and enjoy some autumnal sunshine in the brown, tidal waters off Cardiff.

Here's a 2-minute video of the sail:

https://youtu.be/JmGc1eqy85I

A final video from the Caledonian Canal

 

We've just finished editing some video and photos from the Caledonian Canal so here's the link -it's a 10-minute film, hope you enjoy it:

https://youtu.be/1bECnEI16KM