Travels and boat care
I spent most of July and a week in August helping my friend Peter take his new yacht ‘Minerva of Liverpool’ from Plymouth to the south of Spain. This was about 1500 nautical miles in total.
Peter (left) and I were joined by John until Santander, (not shown) and Martyn (centre).
Nick on Molia for the first time. We made it all the way to the old Severn bridge on quite a strong tide, and on the hottest day so far this year!
This was planned to be our main voyage this year, west in Wales as far as Conwy. But sadly Jo’s mum Betty died suddenly while we were away, so we cut the trip short at Milford Haven. We stayed at Neyland (up the estuary from Milford) for a couple of days before returning home in one leg.
It was a great pleasure to welcome Chris Reynolds onboard. We sped down tide to Cardiff, reaching Penarth in the early afternoon. We towed another yacht out of the barrage lock halfway to Cardiff Yacht Club – then he got his outboard working again.
Moored in pole position for ‘The Deck’ restaurant! Chris went off to Tesco to buy a pillow.
A fine day’s sailing. We got to Swansea early and had to wait for the tide to come in before the lock opened.
A longer sail – we started in the first lock at Swansea (about 0700) and got to Neyland at around 1800. A beam reach most of the way. We fixed the ensign back on after this video!
Neyland is a wonderful sheltered inlet off the Milford estuary; and there is a popular restaurant and a good café at the marina.
We had breakfast at the café, and a lazy day on Saturday in Neyland and went to the excellent Alumchine Restaurant for dinner. On Sunday we visited Pembroke castle.
We returned to Portishead in one leg – 110NM in 20 hours! We left Neyland at first light, and had a fair wind behind us all the way.
A memory of Betty onboard
Installing the AIS and its new SeaTalkng network was not a quick job. The AIS has connections for the VHF aerial, a splitter output back to the ship’s VHS, a dedicated GPS aerial and the SeaTalkng network. In addition, both the AIS and the SeaTalkng network have a power cable connection.
See also – E15- AIS and New Network
We attached the AIS GPS aerial on the starboard stern rail, alongside the existing old chart plotter’s aerial (which we may remove in a future upgrade).
We managed to thread a network spur cable from the chart plotter pod through the rail, down the helm pedestal, and into the aft cabin ceiling. From there it joined the new SeaTalkng network backbone cable which is threaded around the stern space on Molia and down the cable pipe on the starboard side to the instrument panels at the navigation station in the cabin.
We were able to take the existing VHF aerial cable directly to the AIS as there was enough slack. We then made a new hole in the floor of the instrument locker so that the splitter cable could reach the VHF.
Completed wiring (behind the removable panel).
Switch on – and Molia shows on the AIS app! https://www.vesselfinder.com
And now Tim can track us wherever we go (well almost). Thanks to Tim for the screengrab from our trip to Milford Haven (Day 3 20/05/2022).
A sunny cruise across to Penarth in calm conditions. More wind coming back on the Sunday.
With the sails on we headed out to check everything was rigged correctly. A light southerly breeze meant the water was flat, and the crew happy.
Thanks to Wendy for the biscuits, and to Tim for helping and taking the photos and video.
We got a bit tied of propping the locker doors in the heads up with our heads!
The sprung hatch stay from Force 4 works really well in these locations; and it was less that £10. The props are made of stainless steel (304 grade), so there should not be any trouble as they are inside.
We are fitting AIS to Molia for we can see and be seen by other vessels.
We chose the Raymarine AIS700 Class B Transceiver. This incorporates an aerial splitter, and has a NMEA2000 network connection that is SeaTalkng compatible.
SeaTalkng is the Raymarine version of NMEA2000. We will be adding a new SeaTalkng network to Molia. This will connect the helm chartplotter to the AIS to keep us informed about other vessels while we steer.
The existing instruments are on a separate SeaTalk network – this is the Raymarine version of NMEA0183. They can stay on this for now.
Continued – AIS Installation
Thanks to Anna for taking the pictures.
This voyage is on land!
Jetting-off Molia after lifting out. There was not a lot of fouling – the Hempel Cruising Performer antifouling paint seems to work quite well.