South, South, and South again

A lot of water has passed under Vagrant's keel since our last update.

After two weeks inland at the end of August to visit friends and family, we returned to Oban with a hire car full of boat projects and prepared for a visit by our friend Wayne. Those of you on FaceBook may have seen Wayne's updates from the ten days he stayed with us. In summary, it was a good mixture of Hebridean sailing, taking in winds light and strong; Iona, Mull, the Small Isles; a meal with the crew of SV Wings – fellow Boréal owners who we've not seen since Tréguier; a long passage to Islay (where we nailed the tide coming though the Sound of Islay at 8 or 9 kts, with about 5 kts of breeze in the moonlight); a distillery trip; and a final long jump across the Irish Sea to Holyhead where Wayne departed. Thanks for being such a wonderful guest Wayne! 

The wind was fresh and from the North, so we soon set off down St George's Channel to Milford Haven.

In Dale, and Neyland Marina, we started on some of the boat projects.

Phil installed an additional solar regulator to allow us to plug in more solar panels. Our main panel is 360W, but now we have two additional 100W panels. Currently these are "floating" - we can position them on deck or the doghouse while at anchor. Eventually they will be mounted on the arch, alongside the existing panel.

Vagrant was due for her 400 hour engine service. These need doing regularly (now every 200 hours). Previously we had paid Volvo certified enginers, but that is very expensive for what is essentially an oil and filters change. So we rolled up our sleeves and did it ourselves. Phil's optimistic "two hours or so", was completly destroyed by the three hours it took to extract the old engine oil. Yes, we did warm up the engine; yes, we did unscrew the filler cap. The problem was a cheap vacuum pump and a small bore extraction tube. We'll be fitting an eletric pump to make the next service simpler

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Crew who have tried to drag Vagrant's dinghy up a beach with the engine on the back will be pleased to hear we've added drop down wheels:

More helpful Northerlies, so another night passage around Land's End and into Falmouth.

Further boat projects... including a new bilge alarm...

... and a satellite transceiver so we can download weather data when far offshore.

So, where next? Hopefully, Portugal! We're preparing the boat and waiting for the weather to do something useful, then we'll be heading off on our longest passage yet.