On the Boatyard

Hi Everyone
I just thought I would give you my version of things before Chris does his more technical update!!
Nimrod was lifted out on Friday 16th April and it was pretty hairy!!  It took three goes before they managed to lift her out and I think by then everyone on the boatyard was holding their breath. The amount of water pouring out of the keels reinforced the fact that we had indeed sustained a lot of damage in the Easter storm.  We did have to go to the pub after for a few stiff drinks!!
Unfortunately the laundrette I found is now some distance away but Chris has very kindly offered to get my bike out so I can bike there!! I think Chris would look good with a yellow bucket on his head!!.  At least we have got hot water and electric so it’s not as bad as we thought it would be.
We couldn’t have asked for better weather so with that and all the walking we are doing we are getting tanned and fit.  Not sure how long we will be here as we have to wait for quote to be done and then for the insurance company to approve it.
They have a lovely boating park here and at various spots on the way round they have installed items of gym equipment.  I think I might have a go one day but it was busy on Sunday so I will go on a quieter day in case I fall off something.
Dennis, one of the people who helped us lift the boat out, has just been round to invite us for a meal one day next week and to offer any help with the work on Nimrod.  People are so friendly here.  I have jokingly told everyone we have got to be from here by end of May to enable us to get to Norway by 22nd June. That’s when my sister Caroline and her husband Richard are flying out to stay with us!! Don’t worry Caroline I’m sure it will all go according to plan!!

Tuesday 20th April
Well as you have read above we got lifted out as planned.  Three goes required, mainly in order to ensure the crane was in the best place to cope with the weight of Nimrod and also to make sure the crane legs were properly supported on the gravel of the yard.  Once the crane driver was happy the lift was pretty straightforward, apart from the fact we were right on the limit for the crane.  It seems our total weight was 15,500kgs which is a bit more than expected, however as she came out of the water some of the excess weight was explained by the water pouring out of the damaged keels.  Both keel sections were pretty well full of water so this probably meant at least 1 tonne of water that should not have been there.

Getting Ready to Lift Nimrod

Nearly Down on Solid Ground

As you can see from the photos Nimrod looks a very big boat when she is out of the water.  We are now safely chocked and supported on the yard waiting for work to start.
Chris Machin has been round today to survey the damage and decide on the work that will be needed to get us back shipshape and ready to go.  The photo below shows the worst area of damage to the port keel at the aft end.  There is damage to the starboard side in the same place but not as severe.  The rest of the damage is confined to the edges of the keels on all sides, this is mainly superficial but is still going to be properly repaired.  Unfortunately the access into the keel sections is almost impossible so the repair work will be a bit more difficult as it will all need to be done from outside.  Chris is confident that he has a suitable plan to ensure the repair is strong enough to do the job, it will probably mean filling the keels with waterproof foam to give a sound base for the repair and then putting stainless steel shoes on the bottom of the keels to reinforce the repair and ensure complete watertight integrity, hopefully it will also minimise any chances of a repetition of the problems.

Damage to Aft End of Port Keel

So we are waiting for Chris Machin to get the estimate off to the Insurance Company and then we just need the OK to get on with the work, hopefully work can start in a couple of days. 
Although it is a bit of a pain to be sat on the yard when the weather is so nice, we also know that Nimrod will be properly sorted and ready for anything the future holds.  At least the weather means the repairs will not get delayed and hopefully we will still have plenty on decent weather to make our way up through the Scottish Islands.

Last Weekend in Castletown

Friday 9th April
A sunny start to the day, Sue busy with her lovely yellow buckets doing the washing and another crane on the quayside to lift a boat called Shemali Blue back into the water.  This boat has been on the quayside for about 18 months and was tied up in the harbour prior to that, she is a well travelled boat but has been neglected over the last couple of years.  It seems she was sold last Nov and the new owner is intending to get her back into seaworthy condition and then joint the ARC Rally across the Atlantic from the Canaries to St Lucia in November.  As you can see from the photo there is an awful lot of work to do to get her ready.  She was motored up to Douglas, after being put in the water, to have her mast stepped.  Then she was heading for Peel to be lifted out again for a complete shot blast and paint job – no doubt this will make a huge difference to her looks.  All we can do is wish the new owner the very best of luck getting her ready and then completing the Atlantic Crossing.

Wash Day in Castletown – Sue’s Buckets               Shemali Blue Being Lifted Into the Water
Hazy sunshine here with a light breeze, so quite a pleasant day.  We went for a walk along Silver Burn to Ballasala and then back along the road to Castletown.  A peaceful little stroll that used up a couple of hours.  We passed Billown mansion on the way back, you couldn’t see the house itself but the lions guarding the gate and the length of the drive were very impressive in their own right, the drive seemed to be about a mile long of brick paving with trees lining the sides!!!  Apparently it is owned by the man who also part owns the Trafford Centre and Manchester Ship Canal.

Silver Burn, Castletown                                         Entrance and Driveway to Billown Mansion
Off to the Gluepot on Friday Night for a few drinks with the locals, almost empty when we got there but it was then invaded by the local youngsters all dressed in golfing attire.  They were on a pub crawl with scorecards to record their “scores” – no doubt some sore heads in the morning, they stayed about 20mins before teeing off to the next hole.
Saturday 10th April
More sunshine as we managed to do a bit of boat tidying in between relaxation with a cup of tea and a book.  Thought we would try The Sidings for a couple of drinks tonight – it turned out to be Karaoke Night and it seemed to attract the good and bad of Castletown for a Saturday Night Out.  It was highly entertaining, Les was excellent doing 4 or 5 Neil Diamond songs, Dave was not bad on Sinatra and they both did “The Laughing Policeman” together – never heard it done on Karaoke before but they were hilarious.  The less said about Spider and his mates the better – truly awful!!!  The rest varied between pretty good and pretty bad – much the same as Karaoke anywhere.  We declined to entertain them with any of our specialities!!!
Sunday 11th April
Out into Castletown Bay in the dinghy armed with fishing rods to do battle with the monsters of the deep first thing in the morning.  Managed to catch a couple of decent Pollack that were nicely filleted and served up with wine and butter sauce – they always taste much better when they are free and fresh!! 
Sorted the boat ready for our trip up to Ramsey tomorrow, very light winds forecast so probably going to be motoring all the way.  We plan to leave about 0830 so we should have the tide with us all the way to Ramsey.
A stroll round Scarlett Point this afternoon, along the coast towards Port St Mary’s and then back across some very rough fields and along the road to Castletown.  The hazy clouds finally disappeared today to give us nice blue skies and sunshine, the same that the rest of the country have been enjoying.

Looking across Castletown Bay                              The Main Square in Castletown
Monday 12th April
Left Castletown at 0830 and motored all the way to Ramsey since we had no wind, at least the sun was shining and the sea was calm.  Ramsey is much more commercial with fishing boats, cargo boats and all sorts of repair yards etc.  Harbourmasters and everyone else has been very welcoming so we hope our stay is going to go as well as can be expected.  There are plenty of pubs around the harbour and all the main shops are only a short walk so we should be able to survive OK.  We have found the library with free Wi-Fi so we will be able to keep you all up to date with our blog.  So now we just wait until lift-out day on Friday to find out exactly how much damage we have sustained in the Easter Gales.
Hi all Sue here
If anyone knows of a good divorce lawyer let me know!!  I can’t believe Chris has put that picture of me and the yellow buckets on our blog and I haven’t worked out how to delete them yet!!
Next week or so could prove testing as we will be living on board on the boatyard and toilets/showers are quite a distance away.  Perhaps my yellow buckets could be put to a different use!!  Chris keeps telling me it’s all part of boating but I don’t remember him mentioning this before.  Just want to get the work done and get on our way now, patience is a virtue but it’s not one of mine!!  At least Ramsey is quite a big place so lots to explore and best of all it has a laundrette!!  I’m off to the shops now to stock up on wet wipes and deodorant.
Best Wishes to Everyone
Sue and Chris

Stormy Easter in Castletown

Hi everyone it’s Sue here.

After horrendous weather over the Easter weekend our plans have now changed.

Good Friday we went to a Local Food Fayre in Port St Mary. There wasn’t really much there, more like a WI get together but we did buy some scallops and cod from the fishmonger and then caught the next bus back to Castletown.

Easter Sunday a local man came aboard and told us with the weather forecast, southerly winds and gale force 9, it would be advisable to move to a different part of the harbour.  That was all well and good but the tide was going out fast so it didn’t leave us much time to get sorted.  We moved Nimrod and just had time to get a couple of lines tied on before she settled on the seabed.  It was not one of our better moves, more like organised chaos with a few gestures thrown in!!  We set our alarms for 02.00 so we would be up and ready to tighten the lines as the tide came in, bliss.  Unfortunately the swell was so great that Nimrod was thrown backwards and forwards on the seabed and a lot of rocks were uncovered as the sand was washed away. It was awful to listen to as she hit the rocks but there was nothing we could do.  We then had to wait for the tide to go out, which was just as bad again, before we could assess any damage.  It appeared we had sustained damage to the keels, mainly the portside one.

It was now Easter Monday and we decided that it would be best to move Nimrod to another berth when the tide came in, by this time the weather was even worse with waves coming over the breakwater and onto Nimrod.  With the help of the Harbour Master Tony and the said local man Mike we managed to move her but it was at this time I thought camper vans seemed very appealing!!  At least the new berth had a sandy bottom but dried out on a slope which proved challenging when showering or cooking.  When the tide came in though because of the swell it was a challenge to just stand up and I hadn’t even had a drink, even I couldn’t face a drink in this weather!!  The gale reached force 10 that night and all I can say is it wasn’t pleasant, a bit like childbirth - all forgotten now!!  Wednesday saw us on the move again and guess what we went back to our original berth!!  Hindsight is a wonderful thing and I think we probably should have stayed there all along. 

Thursday was another challenge for me, hand washing the bedding and towels.  Chris says i seem to have a knack of making easy things look difficult, perhaps he should have a go next time.  Mind you girls I’m so lucky, I have been bought two huge yellow buckets to do it in so you can keep your washing machines, yellow buckets are definitely the way forward!!  Perhaps I might wear wellies and waterproofs next time though, don’t know how I managed to get so wet!!.  I think a glass or two of wine is in order tonight.

Hence our change of plans as Nimrod is being lifted out by crane in Ramsey on 16th April to repair any damage.  We are going to have timber fitted to the bottom of the keels as well to protect them from this happening again.  Just as well we are insured.  The work should only take a couple of days so all being well we will be on our way to Scotland before too long.

Chris’ turn now!!!

As you can see, Sue has finally managed to put fingers to keyboard and tell you her side of the story – unfortunately it took two attempts because the laptop decided to freeze and loose all Sue’s hard work after her first story.  Have to say it was not her fault, but it must be said she was not very happy!!!

The weather from Easter Sunday onwards was absolutely awful.  It started picking up on Sunday evening rising from a few knts to over 25 in only 3 – 4 hrs.  Then throughout Sunday night and all day Monday it was constantly between 25 & 35knts (F6-8), Monday night and into Tuesday morning was even worse with winds between 35 & 45knts (F8-9) with a maximum speed of 52knts recorded on our wind speed indicator.  Finally started easing off late Tuesday and by Wednesday it was like it had never happened with less than 10knts all day and blue skies to go with it.  The biggest problem was the wind direction, it was forecast to be South Westerly direction but was actually Southerly.  SW would not have been too bad in Castletown but the change to Southerly was enough to blow a significant swell into the harbour and even though we had tried to move to a position that was more sheltered it was not really possible to avoid the swell completely.

This meant that as the tide went out the swell was enough to make Nimrod rise and fall, as well as surge back and forwards as we settled onto the seabed, with the same again as the tide returned.  This meant some pretty hard landings on some pretty hard lumps – 12 tons of boat bouncing up and down on rocky lumps is not nice, consequently the bottoms of our keels had a bit of a battering.  From what I can see they have survived remarkably well, with only two or three areas sustaining serious damage.  All will be revealed in gory detail when we get lifted out next week.

The repairer we have spoken to is based in Ramsey and he has a reputation as one of the best fibreglass composite experts in the North of England area.  He also lectures at the University of Belfast on the subject so we are happy that any repairs will be top quality.

It seems the joys of boating also has one or two downsides, although we will probably have to deal with a lot more problems in the future so perhaps we can just call this “practice”.  Weather today (Thurs) is sunny with no wind and forecast to stay that way for at least the weekend.  The winds of Mon & Tues already seem to be a distant memory – amazing what a bit of sunshine can do.

Winter in the Isle of Man

Well, what a change from the weekend, the week began wet and windy and it has carried on in the same vein ever since.  Monday saw us woken early by heavy rain battering down on the boat and it barely stopped all day.  Tuesday was more wind and not as much rain, winds up to about 25 knts backing from SE round to NE through the day, this meant a bit of wash and swell getting up the harbour to keep us bobbing around.  It was also a pretty high spring tide so our side decks were level with the road alongside the harbour – never been that high here before!!

Overnight Tuesday into Wednesday was pretty much as the forecast said it would be, the wind rising all night and early morning to around 30knts with gusts up to 40knts.  Fortunately it was from the NW, meaning it was blowing directly down the harbour, out to sea, so it was pretty calm on the water compared to earlier in the week. We have also had snow and hailstones, with snow lying on the higher ground to the centre of the Island all day.

Here in the IOM the weather forecast is produced by the Meteorology Department at Ronaldsway Airport and is generally pretty accurate – more so than we are used from the UK Met Office – although, it must be said they are forecasting for a much smaller area.  If you want to check the forecast if you are ever planning to visit or just to see what we are having to put up with then the website is www.gov.im/infocentre/weather.aspx .  The forecast predicts another windy day for Thursday, calmer for Friday, mixed for the weekend and a bit more wind early next week – and you all thought we were here to enjoy ourselves.  The longer term forecasts suggest the weather might improve mid next week, all we can do is wait and see what happens.  There are worse places to be!!!

We have found the Library in Castletown and it offers free Wi-Fi, so that is how we are keeping our Blog and emails up to date.  The Library is quite small, but it has a huge number of books packed onto it’s many shelves – very impressive, especially as it does not seem to be that busy.  We also picked up some books they were selling off, a bargain as well – 5 books for £1.

Shopping is a bit of a shock, even though Castletown has a Co-op and a large Shoprite supermarket the prices are noticeably higher than what were used to in Caernarfon where we had Lidl, Morrisons, Farmfoods, Iceland, Poundstretcher etc.  It looks like we might have to use some of our supplies a bit sooner than we hoped – although we should be able to stock up again in Oban.

A wet floor mat in our cabin when crossing from Anglesey caused some further investigation about the source – it turned out to be from the space between the cockpit floor and the bridgedeck between the hulls.  Living on board all winter gave us quite a lot of condensation throughout the boat that we had to deal with, we did not realise how much had accumulated in the space below the cockpit.

This space is underneath the cockpit and extends to the area behind the helm, it is accessed through a door in the back of the wardrobe in the aft port cabin.  This is pretty easy because the main volume of the space houses the back of the main switch panel, main wiring connections, shore power transformer and inverter, lots of electronics as well as the back of all the helm instruments and switches.  I have to get in there quite often to check on various bits or make changes to wiring etc and I can even stand up in the space behind the helm station.  Unfortunately the underside of the cockpit floor is pretty close to the top of the bridge deck for most of the rest of the area and towards the sides the bridgedeck curves down to where it meets the cabin walls resulting in a deep V shaped channel that is almost impossible to see normally.  I could see some condensation on the flat areas when getting in to the area previously but it didn’t seem like much to be concerned about – normal winter stuff if you like. However over time this condensation has run into these V channels on either side and accumulated into a fair amount of water, our bouncy crossing had sloshed this water into places it was not meant to go resulting in our wet mat!!  **Hope that is all nice and clear**.  Luckily the wet mat was the worst problem it caused.

Getting into the gap to clean everything out was definitely a bit of a challenge, I could just about squeeze in on my stomach, no chance of turning round and a good deep breath made it very tight on the ribs!!  It was also pretty obvious that this space had not been cleaned out since Nimrod was built so it was pretty grotty.  Sponge, scouring pad, lots of disinfectant and wet vac had it cleaned up in a couple of hours with over 1/2 gallon of slimy, muddy water removed.  All clean and fresh now and another job to add to our regular job list – see how lucky we are to have all these pleasant things to do in our spare time.

Thursday turns out to be a nice sunny day, still a bit chilly, but much more pleasant than the rest of the week.  A busy day in Castletown Harbour with a crane on the quay to lift seven boats off the quay and back into the water.  There seemed to be an awful lot of consternation over the one boat we watched being lifted, it took about 1/2 hr to decide where to put the lifting strops!!  It did seem to go smoothly after that.

Easter weekend weather is still not looking too good, so we are not expecting to go anywhere till mid next week.  Bus trip to Port St Mary planned for tomorrow to the food festival that is being held by Paddy’s Market on the harbour – hopefully plenty of free samples on offer and scallops & fish fresh out of the sea to feed us for a few days.