Position: -1 22.69, 50 54.74

With the forecast showing a gap just long enough for the 60-mile run to Southampton, we departed Portland on Friday Jan 6th. We reached Saxon Wharf early that afternoon and moored there for the weekend prior to Dirona being lifted into the boat yard for service on Monday, January 8th. Read more …

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Boats have been damaged or destroyed during lift operations, so we’re always nervous whenever we haul Dirona out. We were impressed with the care Saxon Wharf took in the lift, including asking for exterior hull photos to could assess where to place the lifting straps. The operation went smoothly and by mid-morning we were safely on the hard. Read more …

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Looking south along High Street from just outside our hotel. The anchor is from the cruise ship Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2), whose home port was Southampton. On the left is the shell of Holyrood Church that was bombed in World War II. It was built in 1320 and was one of five churches within the original walled city of Southampton. Partially visible on the right is the ornate facade of the former National Provincial Bank building, erected in 1867.

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Roland Mcildowie of Proteum is “the man” in the area for complex or delicate mechanical work. He’ll be replacing the cutlass bearing and opening up our crane.

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We’re still trying to get that bow thruster propeller off. Roland Mcildowie eventually managed it with what we expected it would require: heat, patience and skill. We don’t recommend red Loctite on the press-fit surfaces.

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Spitfire getting his first smell of the yard. Normally he isn’t that keen on having other people around, but he’s been surprisingly comfortable here and has been charging around the boat exterior while people are working. The only problem is he doesn’t wipe his feet before he comes back inside.

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For our yard visit we’re working with Nordhavn Europe, whose offices are a short distance away at Hamble Point Marina. They have been accepting packages for us over the past few of weeks and brought them all over this morning. Looks like we also got a pair of black ears.

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We had a long list of projects to complete during our Southampton haulout at Saxon Wharf. One of the bigger jobs was to replace the muffler. Our old one turned out to not be in bad shape, and might have gone a few more years. But we couldn’t really know the state of the muffler until the cladding had been removed and we’ve seen enough Nordhavn 47s with mufflers failing around ten years that we wanted to get it changed just in case. A failed muffler can damage in-stack navigational system wiring and make a real mess. Read more …

Position: -1 22.69, 50 54.72

Osmotech at work waxing the boat. In Seattle boats typically are waxed in the water at their slip, but in most places we’ve visited around the world, it is more common to wax the boat while out of the water in the yard. The superstructure is just as easy to clean in the water as out, but the hull is much easier to clean in the yard. Because the yard is a dirty place, we’ll only do the hull and other hard-to-access places.

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Roland Mcildowie has some really excellent tool sets.

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Another major project we completed at Saxon Wharf in Southampton was replacing the cutlass bearings in the rudder and the wing and main propeller shafts. Our main propeller shaft was badly corroded with some of the pits running quite deep, so we opted to replace it during the job. Read more …

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Between Proteum, Osmotech and Nordhavn Europe, a lot of vans are underneath Dirona this morning.

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Normally our galley drains directly overboard, but we did install a Y-valve to direct the outflow to our grey water tanks if we’re in a location where grey water discharge is not allowed. So far we’ve only used it when in the yard, but it’s nice to have to keep the galley operational while we’re in the air.

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The Dolphin Hotel where we are staying is the oldest hotel in Southampton at 500 years old. This is looking out to toward the front entrance through the walkway beside the Tudor-style older portion of the hotel. We love the character of the place and it’s super-convenient to the area’s shops and restaurants. We typically stay on the boat when in the yard, but while hauled out at Cracker Boy Boat Works in Florida we stayed in a hotel because it was so hot on board and it’s nicer not to have water restrictions etc. The boat yard we’re using doesn’t allow people to stay on their boats, so we’re again using a hotel and it’s working out fine.

Position: -1 24.26, 50 54.13

A well-stocked Tesco Express grocery store, with a large selection of ready-to-eat foods, is minutes from our hotel and opens at 6am. We stop in every morning to pick up lunch and other provisions for the day. So far we’ve not had any rain when we’ve been outside and it’s a pleasant walk as the city is just coming to life.

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Our morning coffee from Costa, across the street from Tesco.

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Nordhavn 64 Sweet Hope coming out of the water at Saxon Wharf.

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Mike Homer of HMS Upholstery taking measurements of our pilot house settee. The cushions and ultraleather are pretty tired after seven years of use, so we’re replacing and recovering the cushions.

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We’d noticed a burning smell in the galley and found the source after taking apart the socket. We replaced the socket and the wires to it with the largest gauge the socket will accept.

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Heat damage at the faulty socket.

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Saxon carefully moved Nordhavn 64 Sweet Hope into the yard inches off our stern.

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The keel cooler all cleaned up and ready for repainting.

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Nordhavn 64 Sweet Hope in their yard berth at Saxon Wharf just behind us.

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Another major project that we completed while in the yard at Southampton was to rebuild our crane. It was in remarkably poor condition. The ram-to-extension bolts were siezed due to lack of Tuff-Gel application on the stainless screws in the aluminum casting; the linear winch had worn away all its bearing material, damaging the sheaves and the inside of the extension; the extension lower-bearing pad wasn’t installed in our crane (probably an early build issue on the ES series), yielding fairly serious damage along the entire length of the boom/extension interface; and pictured above is the damage done by the extension upper-bearing pad coming free due to adhesive failure. Solving this consumed a big parts order and a lot of labour. Read more …

Position: -1 24.36, 50 54.17

In the 14th century, a 1.25-mile (2 km) wall was built to completely enclose the town of Southampton. Much of that original wall still stands. This is Arundel Tower, at the northwest corner of the medieval town walls. Beyond is the modern and expansive West Quay Mall, built at the turn of the millennium.

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The medieval city walls extending south from Arundel Tower.

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The atrium at the center of West Quay mall. Like many of the malls we visited in the UK, this one seems to be thriving even though worldwide malls are in decline.

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We had an excellent meal, with a wonderful presentation, at The Real Greek restaurant at West Quay Mall overlooking the old town walls. We’re only a 5-minute walk from our hotel and will definitely be back to sample some of the other many restaurants in the area.

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Dramatic exterior lighting at the Shanghai 1814 restaurant, in an ornate former 19th-century bank building just up High Street from our hotel.

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James holding the spur cutter and talking with Roland Mcildowie and Neil Russel. We’ll need to replace part of the Spur line cutters since an overzealous diver stripped the threads on the zinc attachment. Crated in the trailer behind is our prop shaft, with our old muffler beside it.

Position: -1 24.27, 50 54.33

We were up a little earlier this morning and Costa, our usual stop, wasn’t yet open. So we walked a little farther to get our breakfast at Starbucks in West Quay Mall instead.

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Our through-hull covers all polished up.

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The last time we had our bottom painted, at Cracker Boy Boat Works in Palm Beach, Florida, we definitely didn’t have to warm up the paint prior to application.

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Yann Thompson of Nordhavn Europe painting the hull.

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Biscuit carefully painting around our underwater lights.

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Osmotech is waxing the port side while Nordhavn Europe is painting the hull on the starboard side.

Position: -1 24.38, 50 54.16

We had an excellent meal of all-organic products, including the wine, at Franco Manca in West Quay Mall. Their focaccia was superb.

Position: -1 18.69, 50 51.00

Proteum, based at Hamble Point Marina, is doing most of the mechanical work on Dirona during this yard visit. Proteum has wide skills and experience and is also the distributor for the innovate Oxe diesel outboard. Oxe uses a proven General Motors diesel engine as the powerhead for a commercial-grade outboard.

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Our keep cooler almost ready for repainting.

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Omnitech waxing the hull—it’s looking great.

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We had a great meal at La Baronia Mexican restaurant on our way to the Southampton Airport. We’ll be spending the night in the airport hotel before taking a 6:40am flight tomorrow morning.

Position: -1 21.73, 50 57.05

We’re making a crazy trip to Seattle for the weekend to attend the 50th birthday party of a friend of ours. With the boat in the yard and us needing to be there while the work is being done, we originally didn’t think we could make it. But Jennifer got creative and found a flight from Southampton to Paris and then direct to Seattle that would depart Saturday morning at 6:40 and land in Seattle at noon on Saturday. We’ll attend the party Saturday night, then take a noon flight on Sunday that would have us back in Southampton at 10am Monday morning.

The Southampton to Paris portion of the trip is with regional airline Flybe. Here we’re on the bus that will take us from the Southampton airport terminal out to their turboprop plane.

Position: -122 20.11, 47 36.22

Since we’d be back in Seattle, albeit briefly, we took the opportunity to bring back some parts and spares. We had everything shipped to our UPS mailbox in downtown Seattle and picked them up when we arrived. The large red bag pictured was rolled up and stowed in our carry-on bags on the flight out. For the flight back it’s stuffed full of parts and supplies. In fact, it is so stuffed that the box James is leaning against also is going back with yet more parts and supplies.

The biggest part of this shipment is two Lenovo L1900P monitors to bring our spares supply up to four. We have four of these monitors installed in the pilot house, one in the salon and one in the master stateroom. One had failed recently while we were in Falmouth and even though we have only had a single failure of the monitors in eight years, we decided to buy two more spares from Amazon. It’s crazy to have four spares but with six in use and this monitor no longer in production, it seemed like the right thing to do.

Position: -1 22.69, 50 54.73

One of the items in that big red bag of parts that we brought back from Seattle was a heated mattress pad. We used one on Dirona while in the Pacific Northwest and just loved it. Keeping the stateroom warm enough during the day that the bed isn’t cold when we go to bed consumes way too much power, but we hate a cold bed. We can turn on the mattress heater about a half-hour in advance and retire for the night to a toasty warm bed with minimal power consumption.

We’d stowed the mattress pad when crossed the South Pacific in 2013 and pulled it out again in Liverpool a few weeks ago. Man, that’s a nice addition. In fact, such a nice addition we’ve decided it’s mission-critical and bought a spare. We put the new one into service and stowed the old one as a backup.

Position: -1 22.69, 50 54.73

Yann Thomspon of Nordhavn Europe removing our Diamond Seaglaze pilothouse doors while James supports them from below. We’re having trouble with large sections of paint peeling away. Yann will take the doors back to their workshop to sand off the corroded areas and repaint them.

The paint first failed during warranty, but the repair didn’t last long and the corroded sections are now quite large. This touch-up is far from a permanent solution, but hopefully will get us a couple more years before we have to replace these doors.

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Yann is a carpenter and built impressive plywood covers to seal off the pilot house while our doors are out. We’re almost wondering about skipping the paint on aluminum issue and just painting these white :).

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The starboard-side plywood covers from the outside. Yann does really nice work.

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Bargate, built in 1180 and extended in 1320, was the grand entrance into the medieval walled town of Southampton. We see it every morning when we go to pickup breakfast and lunch.

Position: -1 18.65, 50 50.98

Our new set of eight 8D Lifeline batteries waiting for install when we finish at Saxon Wharf and bring the boat down to Hamble Point. Transporting them to the yard and carrying them up the steps to our is not high an anyone’s list of things they want to do. On top are our thruster propellers in preparation for sanding of the existing Propspeed prior to reapplication.

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Yann Thompson with our pilot house doors laid out on the workbench.

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Yann scraping off the damaged areas on the doors. We’ll not remove all the paint, just where it’s corroding, and repaint those areas.

Position: -1 21.20, 50 52.42

At E. French and Son to pickup a new lower rudder bearing they fabricated. It’s amazing how much machinery they can fit in such a small place.

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E. French and Son in the village of Abbey. It’s unusual to find a machine shop in a series of row houses in a small town. They’ve done several jobs for us during this refit.

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Saxon Wharf power-washing the lift straps after use.

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A cold and frosty morning in Southampton. We even had chunks of ice on deck from small puddles that had frozen and cracked.

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We get a good laugh out of this “Trump-Putin in 2020” sign every time we pass this bus stop.

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Nordhavn 56 motorsailer Deo Juvante on the hard at Hamble Point Marina.

Position: -1 18.60, 50 51.03

Three Nordhavns on the dock at Hamble Point Marina. We last saw Nordhavn 76 Sweet Hope 2 in Baltimore just before it was loaded onto a freighter to be shipped to the UK for sale. It now has been sold and today will be loaded on a freighter to ship back to the US to its new owner.

Behind Sweet Hope 2 is Nordhavn 68 Vesper, whose owners Bob and Kathy Valleau we met in Stornoway in the Outer Hebrides. Nordhavn 47 Albatross on the right is the only one of the three boats we’ve not seen before.

Position: -1 18.59, 50 51.07

The beautiful engine room on Sweet Hope 2. Less common for a Nordhavn that size, it’s a single engine configuration. Their wing engine, at the back on the left, uses the same base engine as our main.

Position: -1 18.57, 50 51.06

Nordhavn 47 Albatross owner Colin Rae saw us walking the docks and invited us in for a cup of tea. It was great to meet Colin and have a look at Albatross. We’ve not been on another 47 or 52 for a while—it’s always surprising how similar and yet how different each boat is.

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Our thruster propellers at the Nordhavn Europe workshop in Hamble Point, all cleaned and ready for painting with Propspeed.

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Mike Homer of HMS Upholstery did a fabulous job on replacing and recovering our pilot house settee cushions. It’s nice to see things starting to come back together rather than be taken apart. We have a lot on the go.

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Jack Woodford with his beautiful Snap-On toolbox at the Proteum workshop.

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A large ferry diesel ferry engine with a broken rod at the Proteum workshop. Saltwater had gotten into the oil, one of the cylinders had rusted sufficiently that the piston was torn in half on the down-stroke, and the flailing connecting rod finished that engine off.

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Two parts of our pilot house doors painted with primer and our thruster propellers coated with Propspeed drying in the paint room at the Nordhavn Europe workshop.

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The ferry Maid of the Harbour just came out of the water and is being moved behind us to a spot in the far corner of the Saxon Wharf yard.

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Both our propellers are now painted with Propspeed and in place.

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Shortly after arriving at Prezzo for dinner, we got an email from our automation systems indicating the shorepower was out on the boat. We called Saxon Wharf and asked if they could investigate.

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A few minutes after calling Saxon Wharf, we received another email indicating the shorepower had been restored. They found a breaker had opened on the shorepower pedestal we shared with several other boats. It sure is nice to have those notifications.

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The spurcutter just behind the prop on our main shaft with a triangular zinc in place. The beehive-shaped prop shaft zinc is behind it.

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The main engine keel cooler painted and ready to go. Everyone says not to paint the keel cooler because paint reduces the cooling efficiency of the cooler. But marine growth reduces it even more. So we experimented in Palm Beach and painted it. It cooled well and the paint kept the growth off. So we repainted it this time around.

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The hydraulics keel cooler also painted and ready for launch.

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The stern thruster propellers painted with Propspeed and installed.

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The bow thruster propellers painted with Propspeed and installed.

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Dirona heading back into the water after nearly three weeks. Prior to this, the longest time we’ve ever been in the yard is ten days. There’s still some work left to do that’s easiest done left in the water. We’ll move over the Hamble Point Marina and Nordhavn Europe Ltd. will finish it up.

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Heading down the River Itchen just past dawn on a one-hour run to Hamble Point.

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Entering the River Hamble from Southampton Waters on a calm, sunny morning. Hamble Point Marina is on the left, with the river extending north to the right. The distinctive forms of Nordhavn 68 Vesper and Nordhavn 47 Albatross are visible to the right of center.

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Our eight new Lifeline 8D batteries, ready to install.

Position: -1 19.67, 50 51.71

At Harrier Vets to pickup Spitfire after emergency surgery. He developed a serious abscess over the weekend. Harrier Vets saw him in within two hours of our calling and had him in surgery later that afternoon. They took excellent care of him and even gave us a ride home as Hamble has almost non-existent taxi service. The little feller is recovering well—we’re lucky to have been somewhere where good service was so accessible.

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Sunrise over the River Hamble from our berth at Hamble Point Marina.

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The River Hamble has strings of offshore berths in the middle of the river, with small gaps between to allow access behind. The distance between the end of our dock and the offshore dock in the distance is at least double the beam of this barge, but he’s working through in a heavy side-current with many millions of dollars in boats all around him.

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The prop shaft has 0.023″ of run-out and the current professional assessment is coupler-to-shaft misalignment. Dirona will need to be lifted out of the water and the prop shaft pulled out for everything to be remeasured and refit. So we’re back as Saxon Wharf this morning.

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Our boat has a 90-ft 50-amp cable which is more than enough for the vast majority of marinas. But we have encountered situations where the closest pedestals aren’t working or its an unusually long distance to reach a pedestal, so we have two extensions. The first is a heavy 50ft extension, and the second is a lightweight 16-amp cable that will give us another 75 feet. Here we’re using the 16-amp cable to reach the blue power pedestal at Saxon Wharf way down where those people are standing.

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On board Dirona for the initial part of the lift to get the lines and straps in place. They’re moving the stern to the edge of the wall so we can get off for the lift to continue.

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As repeat customers, we now have the best spot in the yard, right beside the office and facilities.

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In the old days, shore power connections were never a problem. But, more recently, concern about electrical shock injuries in and around marinas have lead to legislation in many parts of the world require sensitive residual current devices (RCD) be installed. These are often as sensitive as 30mA and, as a consequence, shore power reliability can be impacted.

If the waves are up and a shore power plug takes a wave, the RCD may trip. Any small flaw in insulation that previously wouldn’t be noticed can now trip the RCD. Even a boat that is 100% code-compliant with all good insulation can trip an RCD when initially plugged in. What can happen is large shore power isolation transformers will have sufficient capacitance that the shore power RCD can trip when the power is first applied.

Some shore power designs place the RCD at the head of dock rather than on each boat. These are particularly annoying in that just one faulty boat can take out the entire pier and these issues can take time to isolate by adding one boat at a time to the circuit.

We boated for more than a decade without ever having a shore power problem but, over the course of the last couple of years, we’ve seen three. Two were caused by old insulation with only 3 megohms between the phases and one was caused by a wave during a storm that filled a shore power plug with salt water. All have been easy to address but they can take some time to find.

We now have a Fluke megohmmeter to be able to test all of our shore power equipment, to notice any insulation deterioration quickly and early, and to be able to find problems quickly when an RCD trips. In this case, we’re using a Fluke 1507, but a Fluke 1503 is less expensive and would be perfectly adequate for this task.

Thanks to Steve Coleman for recommending we use a megohm meter.

Position: -1 23.09, 50 54.60

We stopped in for a brew at the Tap It Brewing Co. near Saxon Wharf that we’d visited a month ago on our first day in the area.

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Back at Franco Manca in West Quay mall for their delicious foccacia and pizza. This is their 500°C (900°F) pizza oven.

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A cold and frosty Southampton morning in the mid-30s F. Saxon Wharf is incredibly precise with boat placement and yard-space management. Our bow is so close to the building in front we can reach out and touch it.

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We’d managed not to learn the results of the Super Bowl before watching it last night over NFL Game Pass. Wow—what an exciting game, right down to the last few seconds.

Position: -1 22.72, 50 54.70

Oyster Yachts is based in Southampton at Saxon Wharf, adjacent to the yard we’re in. Up until this week, it’s been a busy place with 160 employees. Yesterday afternoon at 4pm the company announced that it been unable to secure financial support to continue operations. Oyster produces very well-regarded, world-capable ocean cruisers. We’ve met happy Oyster owners all over the world. It’s sad to see them ceasing operations, and Southampton just lost 160 jobs.

Position: -1 22.89, 50 54.67

The Saxon Wharf front gates were closed for the first time since we’ve been here to keep the area around Oyster Yachts free of journalists and TV crews. This is a TV crew setting up just outside the Saxon Wharf gate.

Position: -1 24.37, 50 53.84

The fabulous Dancing Man Brewery is housed in a former 14th-century wool storage building. The wool trade was the basis of Southampton’s prosperity in the middle ages. We had a great meal and excellent beer.

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A night shot of Dirona on the hard at Saxon Wharf. We’ve really enjoyed Southampton, but we’re past ready to be floating again.

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We had an excellent beer and delicious pizza at the striking London Road Brew House. It seems we can keep finding new, interesting restaurants in Southampton for ages. But our new propeller shaft is back in place and we’re hoping for a launch tomorrow.

Position: -1 22.72, 50 54.70

A cold morning just below freezing in Southampton at 30.0°F (-1.1°C). But a good day for a launch, with almost zero wind. We’re keeping our fingers crossed.

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One of our two boat deck LED floodlights failed, so James replaced it with a spare. We use the lights to illuminate the boat deck for loading and unloading the tender or working on deck at night. The picture also shows one of the two side-facing lights, identical to the aft lights, that we use to help navigate at night in close quarters—they light up the area for a good two hundred feet on either side of the boat.

Position: -1 22.71, 50 54.73

It’s not that uncommon for a trawler owner to look for more rudder power and we’ve seen many solutions including actually installing multiple rudders. This particular configuration is a bit weird in that it’s a single rudder with twin screws so there is not a rudder behind either screw. This will negatively impact close quarters operation. What they have done in this boat to get more lift from the central rudder is install two additional rudder surfaces on either side of the main rudder.

This is one of the simplest of the after-market approaches we’ve seen to increase rudder lift.

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On the lift at Saxon Wharf for launch.