Up the Tamar

 

Boat with a view - over Cargreen, on the Tamar

Things picked up after rounding Portland Bill early on Friday morning about 5 miles to the north when an Easterly breeze gradually filled in allowing us to sail under the cruising chute and poled out Genoa for a few hours. When the wind veered towards the south later in the evening we reverted to Mainsail and Genoa. 

Basty

Mick

Sunset near Portland Bill

A view from the Bow - Bonny underway

Two salty see dogs

Basty admiring the cruising chute

Good progress was made across Lyme Bay over night until about 10 miles to the North East of Salcombe, the wind suddenly veered and died. With the tide against us we faced what would be a rather tedious and lengthy beat around Start Point. The engine was therefore pressed into service once again and we motored around the Salcombe 'bulge'. Once round we briefly had a fair wind but within an hour or so of making sail, the wind failed once again and once again the engine was pressed into service.

We motored the remaining 15 or so miles into Plymouth and moored up in Mayflower Marina at around 0800 yesterday, Saturday 8th July.

Mick cooked up a huge breakfast after which we all made use of the excellent bathroom facilities.  Basty then left for home and Mick caught up on some much needed sleep. I snoozed for a while and then pottered around doing goodness knows what.

Mick and I then tackled a lengthy diagnostic exercise on the boat's AIS (Automated Information System). This is a system that transmits information about the boat (course, speed, type of vessel etc) over the VHF radio wavelength to other vessels and receives the same information from  other vessels. All commercial vessels are required to transmit over the system but it is optional for leisure craft, many of which have relatively cheap receive-only equipment. Increasingly however, transmitting equipment has become more affordable and more and more boats have installed it. The system has made navigating much safer when vessels are in close proximity to one another.

Bonny has an AIS transmitter, but a few weeks before departing Hoo, I noticed that it was not working properly - a fault indicating that it was not transmitting was displayed on the set. 

The transmission and reception of data is conducted via an antenna that on Bonny was at the top of the mast. So, a few weeks ago I climbed up the mast to investigate. I found a poor connection between the cable and the antenna and the antenna itself looked in poor health. Great I thought, there's the problem, so I disconnected the antenna and ordered a new one. A week later armed with a new one and the necessary bits and pieces to connect it I went back up the mast and installed it. Back in the cabin I turned on the AIS transceiver to check all was well and was extremely disappointed to see things were no better. I concluded the old cable must also be faulty and so I bought some more. I couldn't face what would be a nightmare job to get the new cable up the inside of the mast and so decided to relocate the antenna to the solar panel 'arch' on the stern of the boat. I therefore had to go back up the mast to retrieve the new antenna.

A week later armed with the new cable, I installed the antenna in it's new location. After connecting everything up I turned on the set once again, but again there was no improvement. The set continued to display the warning that it was not transmitting.

A good reading

A bad reading

The question of course was why? Was there a problem with the transceiver set itself, was the cable at fault or was the new antenna faulty? We had three pieces of cable that we could connect the antenna to and we could connect the AIS transceiver to the VHF Antenna that is normally used by the VHF radio. We got poor readings on every occasion that the new Antenna was used but a much better reading when we connected our existing VHF antenna to the transceiver.

Ergo - the new antenna is faulty.

I've therefore contacted the supplier and asked them to replace the antenna. Hopefully that will solve the problem.  

Once we'd completed the diagnostics, Mick left to return home to tidy up his affairs and I took the boat up the Tamar to Cargreen for a few days in order avoid the hefty marina fees. 

A visitor (Wagtail) at Cargreen

The Cargreen Anchorage at dusk

I'll be taking her back on Wednesday, however, when I will also return home for a few days. We then have various friends to meet up with over next weekend. Hopefully we'll be ready to leave for Madeira towards the end of the following week.