Never have we both been so ready to return to LJ. The nonsense with our roofs continues as does the ridiculousness of the attitude of some of the residents of Marchwood who claim to be adults, suffice it to say we have both had enough and longed to be back on board.
We had no intention of going out sailing immediately; instead the plan was to chill out, sit on board, read, listen to music, eat cheese, drink wine and do all those niggling repair jobs that have been staring at me for years. First thing was to put the outside table back together which I’d been taken home for the winter and was my project of re-surfacing, staining and protecting.
The repair list started with the Radar which packed up due to the mechanism being full of water. Despite being a discontinued item, I managed to purchase one from Ebay with the promise that it was a ‘worker’. We found a young man who shinned up the mast and after a day of unfathomable electrics we have a working radar once more.
I tended to the decks by removing the excessive caulking (black Lines) that was protruding from the deck and sanded off the excess. We scrubbed the bilges, refitted the sails and started on the gel-coat to make her all gleaming and shiny again.
Then the electrical gremlins nearly killed us. Without any warning our remaining battery over heated and gassed whilst we were asleep, not sure we will ever forget June 5th. The Mastervolt warning system failed to identify that the battery was at an horrific temperature and the main gas alarm also failed to react to a boat filling up with Hydrogen Sulphide. Nina woke to make tea just as the cheap back-up battery-operated carbon monoxide alarm screamed itself inside out indicating 88ppm, we later read that anything over 100ppm could be fatal. With the additional horrible fizzing noise coming from the battery, Nina struggled to rouse me and get me up top grabbing phone and car keys as we went; thankfully she did. We escaped a gas filled boat which had the potential to explode. It took all day for the battery to cool down sufficiently to remove and so we now had no electrics whatsoever. And very nearly, no boat.
Nina called the marina office for medical help and they got a ‘paramedic’ to us almost immediately. He checked me over and after sucking a small oxygen tank almost dry he declared i didn’t need to go to hospital, but that we were very lucky. That had already occurred to us! He checked in with us again a few days later when he came to visit his own boat.
Avid readers will recall our love / hate affair with Fisher Panda UK who installed this system in 2018. That said, they have always responded to every incident as we would appear to have unique problems which had not been repeated on any other vessels with the same equipment. They immediately talked me through a rewiring program for us to continue living on board. Without needing to raise our voices, Fischer Panda sourced everything required to renew our system, packed up their rescue truck and no less than 12 days later arrived to replace the entire system at a cost to themselves of over £7k. That said the cost to us could have been much worse. We move on.
With all of that behind us we were just about to set off when it was identified we needed a new alternator (€800 and nearly 2 weeks to arrive). Then there was an overheating problem and a new thermostat (€80).
In between all of this chaos we kept a cheerful outlook; enjoyed the local beaches, went sightseeing in Josselin and celebrated our wedding anniversary with a picnic and a visit to the impressive Domaine de Suscinio.
With everything now working, but still somewhat hesitant we stayed in the Villaine for some rubbish weather to blow over and tested all the new systems before heading out of the lock into the big blue wobbly stuff.
1st June – 7th July 2025
Trip Mileage 27 miles
Mileage Completed 2546 miles