Good Mood #9/22

Friday 13th August.

The purpose of today’s trip was a shakedown for the newly-fitted Raymarine ‘B’ class AIS transceiver, and the equally newly-fitted Raymarine Axiom chartplotter. I bought both devices in January in a post-Christmas sale. They were remarkably cheap for brand new units (compared to the prices quoted by other retailers).

I was accompanied by the Commodore of one of the local sailing clubs. I wanted someone else onboard in case I needed to tweak and fanny about with (to use a technical term) any of the settings on the new electronic kit.

The day promised and delivered light winds and a sunny, cloudless sky. There was no significant swell to speak of. We left Deganwy an hour after the gate opened, which meant we had to battle against the incoming tide at the mouth of the river.

All the way out of the marina, down the river, and out into the bay the AIS chirped away quite loudly as it picked up potential threats, and plotted their trajectories against their closest point of approach (CPA). It got a bit annoying. I made a mental note to look at desensitising that alarm.

Once out into the bay we picked up a steady 6kts SOG in a wind that held mostly steady at 9kts on an almost beam reach. I made a brew and then went below to plug the laptop into the AIS transceiver and check the diagnostics software. There was good news and not so good news:

Although the six green checks looked healthy, as did the respectable VSWR, the red status error light concerned me.

I checked all the physical connections (all good) and rebooted the AIS and the chartplotter. Same problem. Unable to try anything else I put the laptop away and joined the Commodore in the cockpit.

We hadn’t really met before, apart from a five-minute chat on the marina quay some months before. It’s fair to say we learned a lot about each other and, in the ‘it’s a small world’ department, we found out that we had been stationed in RAFG at the same time, and she had served at RAFH Wegberg as a nurse, at the same time I was about 35km up the road at #4 Wing (Jaguars), RAF Bruggen.

After a bunch of hours sailing in light winds, it was time to head back. I furled the Genoa and, due to the lack of wind, started the engine and we motor sailed back towards the shipping channel.

About 2nm out from the channel we heard a call to the Coastguard on the VHF. A one-man fishing boat had taken a small two-person yacht in tow. The yacht skipper had been injured, was losing blood, and his crewmate didn’t have sufficient ability to get the boat back to port themselves. The fishing boat asked the Coastguard to call out the RNLI Inshore Lifeboat from Conwy for assistance.

The Commodore and I looked at each other. I said ‘what can we do to help?’, a question neither of us could answer right then, but I plotted an intercept course for where we reckoned the towing fishing boat might be (they’d given their position to the Coastguard), and opened up the engine.

We battered through the water and within 15 minutes we had closed on the towing/towed vessels. The Commodore went forward to the bow and had a shouted conversation across 15m of water with the fisherman and with the crewman in the towed yacht, then she came back to the cockpit and said we were going to try to get her aboard the towed yacht, as the skipper had now lost consciousness.

There were quite a few small, fast pleasure boats out on the water, but none of them were monitoring Channel 16, obviously! Eventually we flagged down a family in a large rigid inflatable boat (RIB) who agreed to take the Commodore over. The RIB and I matched course and speed and the Commodore made a smooth transfer. The RIB circled away to the towed yacht and the Commodore again transferred, and began administering first aid to the injured skipper.

I circled away to put some sea between Good Mood and the other boats and was approaching one of the channel buoys when the engine overheat alarm came on. I let go of the tiller, dashed down into the cabin, switched the engine off, pulled the autopilot out of its cupboard, back into the cockpit and put the autopilot on. I then dashed inside to the forward berth (which currently looks like a workshop), got a screwdriver, opened the engine bay and disconnected the fresh water pump inlet. It flowed water so I connected it back up and disconnected the fresh water pump outlet. It flowed water so I connected it back up. Then I took the cover off the pump and pulled the impeller out. It looked in top, condition and hardly used. I put the pump together again, then went back into the cockpit and waited for the engine to cool. After five minutes I started it; the exhaust flowed water, the alarm was silent, and the engine sounded sweet.

This is the fifth or sixth time the engine overheat alarm has sounded this year. I really need to sit down and work out why this is happening. I don’t think it’s because the cooling system is blocked; I suspect there’s another issue. But that’s for a different time.

The RNLI ILB arrived and took over the care of the injured party. Then transferred him onto their RIB and made for Conwy at full speed. The Commodore took over command of the small yacht and tracked my course as I motored for Deganwy at speed.

At speed because the incident had put me behind schedule, and I was now dangerously close to the gate closing time. If I missed that, I’d have to get back out into the bay to wait five or six hours until the next time the gate was open.

Also, I didn’t have the mooring warps set or the fenders out – because those were jobs the Commodore would do, and she was now onboard the smaller yacht astern of me, now heading it towards Deganwy. I put the autopilot on again, scrambled forward and flicked the fenders out, climbed back into the cockpit, thought about lowering the mainsail and then decided to leave it up; my number one priority was to get back before the gate closed.

I called Deganwy on the VHF, said I was on final approach and asked if the duty master could help me berth the boat as I was unprepared – I explained why. With six minutes to spare I made the marina and then slowly motored to home berth where, 5m out from the pontoon, Good Mood stopped. We were silted in the mud. With a little encouragement from the engine we slid into position and the duty master helped moor her.

I then put the boat to bed and tidied up; the small yacht crept over the cill gate with about three minutes to spare. After another 15 minutes, the Commodore – having berthed the small yacht – came aboard and we sat in the cockpit and ate our delayed lunches, and talked about the afternoon’s adventure.

It wasn’t the day out that I’d planned, but the shakedown had identified a problem with the AIS that I need to follow up. And the Commodore and I’d had an adventure.

The postscript: The RNLI took the casualty to Conwy where a helicopter was waiting. He was transferred to hospital and 24 hours later underwent surgery. He is now out of hospital and will fully recover from his ordeal.

The other postscript is that despite the AIS transceiver showing a red status light, Good Mood had registered her AIS presence and was showing up on Marine Traffic. I’ll contact Raymarine Tech Support to see what they say.