Ocean40

Fin du saison / Father Ted

Ok -so what’s Father Ted go to do with it?

Well it appears he is alive and well making cheese:

Well worth getting – he’s doing a good job of it….

End of Season?

You wouldn’t believe it – or maybe you would. In the UK the August bank holiday traditionally marks the end of the summer season. I can tell you that here, after Sunday 25th the difference is phenomenal….

We are enjoying our last night at La Roche Bernard. As I write this at 2310 it’s a dry heat 24 degrees.

Boats movements have dropped markedly, there are spaces that wait to be filled for hours (but they do get filled in hours, rather than minutes as per day before). The harbour master busies himself with moving boats that will over winter here away from the visitors pontoons in the hope he will get move guests. He didn’t care so much yesterday.

The local restaurants welcome you, I mean really welcome you: want your custom…they know if you move on they might not fill the table. Last night it was the opposite: they knew they would fill every table and didn’t care too much about your money.

So that’s it then?

Well pretty much so . We are 4nm away from the winter mooring and will be there by the time you read this. There’s a couple of posts that I would like to finish (St Martin, Pornic to be specific) and you might get those after we get back to the UK because they are great places and need some justice doing to them)

So for 2013-14

The boat is in Arzal-Camoul for the foreseeable future. We might visit alongside arrangements to take it out for annual underwater maintenance. It could be a base if you fancy a holiday? – let me know.

Thanks for reading – if there is any aspect of our travels that you would like to know more about just let me know

 

Martin

La Roche Bernard

23:33 26/8/13

 

 

Panoramas

it’s 11 at night, we are still in Pornic (we like it here),  too warm to go sleep so I thought I’d bore you with a bit of tech.

Avid readers will have noticed that I use a few panoramas to make more interesting pics….

If you are interested in making some of your own panoramas check out this link

Download the windows version (free) and install on your PC.

Use it to create panoramas from 2 to loads of photos – it’s so easy – take loads of photos of your subject, upload to a PC, start the program, tell it which photos to use and it does everything else.

World 470 Championships

One of the nice things about cruising is that you often have no idea what’s going on in a port until you get there.

Les Minimes in La Rochelle is no different: We find ourselves right in the thick of the World 470 Championships.

This means that there’s a lot of 470’s around and at this early stage GBR is well placed in both mens and womens events – more if you read this post from the 470 people.

It also provides a few opportunities for nice photos to pass on:

 

The electro taxi boat was making a great attempt to get honours:

but was subsequently disqualified for a) not being a 470 and b) having too many crew on board

 

if only I’d known that…..

Writing on 26th July in sunny Camaret it’s now time to recount a problem that occurred last Sunday and wasn’t very funny at the time.

Andrew’s friends on Bryher, Martin and Fi,  had invited us to a seafood lunch using ingredients caught in their own pots. And to celebrate the (almost) completion of building works we went across from our mooring in Filibusters tender, armed with a couple of bottles of bubbly.

It was going to be a fine afternoon with lovely food and great company overlooking Hell Bay. We arrived ashore and tied the dinghy well up onto the slip as per photo.

It was indeed a fine afternoon with lovely food and great company overlooking Hell Bay. Replete we wandered back to the slip. The tide was at the top of springs.

NO DINGHY!!!!!

Surely not, in one of the finest cruising spots, could someone have stolen it?

No evidence either of coming loose and floating off downwind.

So we asked around and someone in the nearby shop remarked that they had indeed seen a dinghy under the slip. Tim got a lift on a local boat and looked long the line of the slip:

…..he saw the transom peeking out from under the slip…..

…5 feet under water.

The rising tide coupled with gentle breeze has lifted the dinghy under the slip where it became stuck and subsequently submerged under the rising tide. This particular slip as you can see in the photo is supported on cylindrical pillars and otherwise open underneath.

Our plight had been noticed by the fantastic people at Bryher Boat Services and they loaned us a dinghy to get out to Filibuster for a period of contemplating the tide and donning swimming gear.

We waited for the tide to drop low enough to a) wade out and then b) extract the dinghy.

Well, to cut long story short we recovered the dinghy back to Filibuster for treatment. The final result was a 100% operational tender.

Valuable lessons learnt:

• be aware of slips that can trap your dinghy
• we are not alone: the other dinghy in the photo was even further submerged….

 

 How to get a submerged engine going

read on if you want to know how to fix a dinghy engine that has been under the water for several hours:

1. wash everything in copious amounts of fresh water
2. drain the fuel tank as it almost certainly contains sea water
3. drain the carburetor
4. take out the spark plug, dry and clean
5. Tip the engine upside down and empty any water out of the spark plug hole
6. Give the starter cord a good tug to expel any water inside the engine
7. dry out electrical contacts with WD40. A good time to check for a spark is now
8. Replace spark plug, fill tank with fresh fuel and let some run through the fuel system before replacing the carb drain
9. reconnect everything
10. turn on the fuel etc and try to start

If you have a good engine (Johnson 3.5 2 stroke in our case) you will be reward by it coughing into life.

Give it a good run. We found going to the pub was just about right….