Trouper’s Blog

Category: Maintenance

Interlude on instruments, and a possible project.

Sadly my man in Lymington got back to be on the pilot remote control and said that whilst they’d have a look it wasn’t really their thing. They’ve given me the details of a guy in Croatia, so I’ll try him. But it’s got me thinking a bit about how to keep the boat’s instruments and pilot working long into the future without having to engage in a very expensive wholesale replacement.

The problem is one of history, and arguably corporate ownership. B&G are a venerable British marine electronics firms who produced the first electronic yacht instruments, starting in the 1950s. One of the best histories of marine electronics I’ve read is here, written by Nick White, the author of the truly awesome Expedition Navigation package (my only gripe with expedition is that it forces me to own a Windows PC – I’ve owned Macs since the ’80s).

B&G produced the first modern network style system and at some point in the 80s or early 90’s adopted a CAN bus technology that enables multiple devices to exchange data across a single network cable run around the boat, which they called Fastnet. It was a closed proprietary solution which allowed you to add whatever (B&G) elements you needed and have them all interoperate and display any of the data at any of the displays. In its day it was revolutionary. The modern NMEA2000 (N2K) Industry standard communications system is actually also a CAN implementation with a different messaging standard (which is irritatingly a closed standard owned by an industry body, rather than being open and public – though extensively reverse engineered these days). N2K achieves the same interoperability but across manufacturers allowing you to mix and match equipment, at least to some degree.

Trouper’s H2000 system uses this old B&G technology to connect its three processing units to 12 displays, and five fundamental measurement transducers. The fundamental measurements are depth, speed through the water, rudder angle, wind speed and direction, heading, trim, heel (and associated accelerations). The main processor combines wind and boat speed data to produce a calibrated and corrected set of both true and apparent wind values (the difference between the wind you’d feel stationary in the water, and the wind you feel as you move over the water), together with a calibrated depth (ours is set to report depth under the keel – some hold near religious views that this should be set to depth of water). The performance processor computes the boat’s performance data based upon an uploaded model of the boat’s performance (effectively the expected boat speed for different wind strengths and angles) known as the boat’s ‘polars’ to allow you to monitor your performance. It makes sail trim much easier to set as the system removes the effect of every gust and shift, so you can see if a trim change was effective. The performance processor also provides a serial comms interface to a computer (and Expedition in my case) that allows the computer to add data to the network as well as read its contents. The processor and also provides an NMEA0183 Industry standard serial interface for connecting a GPS. Finally the autopilot controller connects the heading, orientation, and ruder sensors to the network but also controls a motor unit that can move the rudder. It uses some quite clever algorithms keep the boat’s course straight – using acceleration data to create corrective inputs before the boat’s heading has changed, just as a good helmsman does. It will also sail to both true and apparent wind angles, using wind data from the network, which can be really helpful on longer passages under sail, or sailing upwind. The pilot was the first of the generation of systems to use this gyro data, and heavily used in the Open 60s of the late 90’s and early 2000s.

An H2000 FFD in Trouper’s Nav Station.

The remote control that has sort of died – given that it only works with the battery cover off, it’s not exactly useful on deck – was built by B&G at Ellen McArthur’s request, and she was often pictured clutching one when doing her single handed round the world record on her trimaran. It’s really handy – not only does it do pilot remote control functions but it allows you to set what data appears on the mast displays and alter system calibration and configuration settings.

The rather excellent B&G RemoteVision.

B&G ultimately ended up as part of Simrad, in turn part of Navico, which is part of Brunswick Corp, a US corporate behemoth. On the way it stepped away from the firm’s long history of incremental upgrade and backwards compatibility, and gave up on its UK manufacturing site. H3000 had replaced H2000 and everything interoperated happily using Fastnet and the displays fitted in the same holes in the boat’s deck. H5000 moved to the NMEA2000 (N2k) bus standard, supplemented by some ‘private’ proprietary messages for performance data, but dropped all interoperation with Fastnet devices and even eschewed direct connection of sensors to the processor. Even the visually similar displays required a new larger hole. If you wanted to move to H5000 you had to throw almost everything away and start again. Each of those dozen displays I mentioned is in the region of £1000.

B&G 2020’s on Trouper’s mast, below the boom, facing aft.

I didn’t go that route and instead have bought up spares from ebay and now have a small stock of spare parts. Indeed everything except the pilot remote control… Many of B&G’s service team, who were based in Romsey in Hampshire, ended up at a new firm called Tinley Electronics in Lymington (my nice man). Tinley have grown into A&T Instruments and initially targeted mainly the superyacht market, but essentially people with large legacy B&G installations. They continue to repair B&G displays and processors though now also make their own displays and processor that support the Fastnet protocol and fit in the holes. Their stuff is not cheap, but it will allow me to keep Trouper’s instruments working.

After a while B&G realised the error of their ways and released the H5000 Fastnet interface. This is an irritating device as it is so close to being what everyone needs, but not quite, presumably in the (erroneous) belief that it might cannibalise sales of new kit). It is essentially a one way converter from Fastnet to N2k. You can now connect N2K displays, including the nice H5000 colour graphic display at Trouper’s helm (guess how I know that the cut out is different – I ended up buying a 3d printer to fix that problem…). The problem is it doesn’t translate all the data – none of the performance or autopilot data, for example – and it is one way. Except that hardware is not really one way as it allows changes to display brightness in both directions. So it could pass much more data from N2k to Fastnet. This would be ever so handy as it would be a clean way to integrate my modern N2K GPS with the Fastnet instruments, and it could allow you to connect N2K autopilot controllers, complete with remote controls. But it doesn’t.

H5000 GFD at Trouper’s binnacle (with 3d printed enclosure).

A&T’s public literature is a little opaque about quite how much translation their processor does between N2K and Fastnet. It supports both but I’m guessing that given that they’ve reverse engineered and reimplemented B&G’s work there will be agreements in place, or at least a little caution, about what they say in public. As far as I’m aware it doesn’t translate pilot control messages, and at £7k ex VAT it would be a somewhat extreme fix to a broken remote even if it did.

Boats attract technologists and it should be no surprise that there is a large community of people building open source software solutions for sailing boats – from navigation applications through to autopilots and instrument systems. They have reimplemented N2k in software libraries that make it simple to use and implement on small hardware devices like Arduinos. There is a powerful Arduino with two CAN interfaces. There is some public documentation of the Fastnet protocol from a few people reverse engineering it. So I got to wondering: I’ve got all the bits to set up a test rig (all those spares), why not reimplement the Fastnet to N2k gateway with support for all the missing bits? It might be possible to get hold of some Fastnet documentation but if not reverse engineering it should be fairly doable, given what already exists. It won’t be a quick project, so I’ll get it touch with the guy in Croatia and see about sourcing a spare remote control. After I’d started drafting this a RemoteVision I’m trying to negotiate a sensible price for a spare on eBay. I’ll also have a conversation with B&G Support – if nothing else it will be worth checking that they aren’t willing to do a software update for the gateway…

August 24, 2025
Risk perception and back in the English Channel

As someone who has spent a lot of time teaching people to use powerboats safely it is interesting to see the French approach to risk management and safety. The UK has a sad history of accidents resulting in deaths and serious injury from using powerboats, especially RIBs. That’s resulted in an approach to managing them and ‘good practice’ standards that are far removed from what I see here. To be clear I see no evidence of the French approach being dangerous, and indeed I suspect that they don’t have our history of accidents, suggesting a higher standard of safety. But what I see would have many of my UK colleagues tutting: no kill cords in use, sponson riding, indeed driving the boats from the sponson and driving whilst standing, even with tiller steered boats. And yet the standard of boat handling is consistently very high with a casual and unconsciously competent displays of excellent boat control.

More generally I can’t help but notice that the French approach tends towards less physical infrastructure and more towards people being encouraged to be sensible. Walking on the wave screen wall at Trinite there was no railing either side – just an obvious edge. Walking around an old castle there was no fence to the drop into the dry moat, just a band of about a meter of larger pebbles to delineate where the safe footpath finished. I must confess I do like the approach of expecting a bit more from people, although I’d still favour the use of kill cords – once you’re used to them they really aren’t much of a pain and are a simple mitigation to a low probability, very high impact event (ie falling out and being mown down by your own boat and propellor).

When, in a former life, I did my professional training in Occupational Health and Safety we were taught a clear hierarchy of desirability of risk mitigations: safe place was far preferable to safe person. the thinking was that in a workplace you should not need specialist knowledge or equipment to stay safe. In a controlled environment that still seems to me to be the preferred solution: you provide effective dust or fume extraction, not respirators to anyone who enters the space. But I wonder if that culture has bled out from making factories and laboratories safer workplaces into the wider public assuming that their safety will be managed for them and that they don’t need to worry about it. That might be one of the reasons why the construction industry has long struggled with its safety record – construction sites are usually difficult to control fast changing environments.

There’s been a lot of research showing that risk perception can have an outsize impact on risky behaviours: across London railings have been taken down around pedestrian crossings, and pedestrian injuries have been reduced. Car drivers are slower and more cautious around exposed pedestrians, yet the old railings afforded little real protection to the pedestrians. I wonder if the French approach to boat handling and education is more effective. But then every town we’ve visited has had huge sailing schools taking all the local children out, so familiarity with the environment is deeply ingrained knowledge.

Cameret proved to be a nice little seaside holiday town that was having a Fete for the local lifeboat, complete with helicopter winching exercises off the quay a little after we arrived. The visitors berths a quite a walk out along the breakwater (no railings…) and the sanitary facilities are a bit basic. We elected to shower on board for the two nights we were there.

Whilst in the Morbihan we’d used the boat’s black water holding tank to capture toilet waste and then pumped out in Port Du Crouesty. The boat was built with a holding tank for the aft head, and you can choose to flush to toilet into the tank or over the side. When built the only way to discharge the tank was to pump it out (by hand) back through the toilet’s normal discharge over the side. For our trip to Holland some ten years ago I’d also fitted a deck pump out fitting allowing the tank’s contents to be pumped ashore. That turned into a bit of a mission. I couldn’t find a pump out deck fitting that visually matched the existing deck fittings for water and fuel. Finally I contacted Nautor, the makers of Swans, in Finland and they explained that the fittings on our boat were custom made to their specification. They offered to have a pump out fitting made to match. It cost about 500Euros in the end, but I felt it was worth it to keep the boat (and Swans of this vintage are sort of iconic) looking right. Anyway in the end it all seemed a little excessive as we never found anywhere on the Dutch canals with a working pump out station, despite all the warnings before we got there that it was mandatory to pump out ashore. I’ve never regretted having the option but had never actually used it before. We connected it up and pushed the button and could see liquid being extracted through the window in the hose. It took a good ten minutes to suck the 120l tank dry. Carteret saw the tank put back into service, though I pumped it out by hand once suitably offshore.

Bespoke Pump out Fitting from Nautor – it weighs about 4kg!

We had two nice dinners ashore in Carteret, and a much needed trip to their excellent SuperU to stock up before we left this morning to head North and up through the Chenal Du Four. After filling up with fuel (215l, the first since Brest) we sailed for a bit to start with before the wind died away. It was grey all day, though not at all cold.

Pte de Saint-Mathieu at the Southern entrance to the Chenal du Four.

By later afternoon we were working out way into Aber Benoit where we picked up a visitor mooring, put the kettle on and tidied up. The harbour master popped by, took 18Euros for the night and offered to take any rubbish ashore if we needed, which was welcome, though not needed.

Tomorrow sees us head east to Roscoff.

August 16, 2025
Glenan and the Raz with company

Port Tudy drove home what I’d been noticing for some time: whilst Trouper is perhaps a little larger than average around the Solent but at 43′, she’s hardly large, and 50’+ boats are common; here we are definitely heading for outsize. When we had dinner with our friend’s brother in law, a lifelong sailor, the other week he’d suggested that there was no need for a boat larger than 10m (33’ish) south of Brest. Most ‘big’ cruising boats here are 30′-35′ and moorings are much more limited for boats over 12m (40′). Boats in the 20-30′ range are still common. This feels much more like my childhood sailing in the Solent in the 70s and 80s. At some point in the 90s boats started to get really big.

The last of my families ‘big’ cruising boats was bought in 1980, and sold in 1987 when I went to University and my father lost his crew, and was 26′. A family of four on board was snug. We had a single hand pump for a fresh water tap and no hot water beyond that the that kettle would supply. In those days a 32′ boat was a big boat and 40’ers were scarce. Given that Trouper was built in 1989 it’s clear that there were bigger boats around, but at 43′ Trouper was then far from the smallest boat in Swan’s range, and Swan were then, and still are, pretty much the definition the premium end of sailing boat construction. Swan have in the last couple of years introduced a new small boat into their cruising range at 48′ after years of not making anything much smaller than 54′.

The prevalence of smaller boats brings the costs down considerably and makes access to boating much more affordable. It is very noticeable that in my childhood boat ownership was affordable for people of reasonable means – at least two of my secondary school teachers had boats – but I can’t imagine a modern teacher being able to afford a boat in the UK these days. I suspect a combination of the early skill development and exposure to sailing, a national obsession with fishing, and more affordable boats makes mucking about in boats much less of a privileged elite’s hobby in France.

We left Port Tudy a little after 9 – when we had to go in order to let someone on the inside of the raft out. The timing suited us as I was very keen to have time in the middle of the day to have a good look at the Glenan. These islands are famous because of the sailing school set up there post war. It’s original aim was to rehabilitate former resistance fighters but it has grown and become the centre of a huge sail training operation. The Glenan’s teaching philosophy is set out in its sailing manual, that was available in the 80s and 90s in English translation, which is where I was first exposed to it by my father, who I think got his copy in the now sadly defunct nautical bookshop at Bursledon on the Hamble river. The approach is what I’d now know to describe as experiential: starting in dinghies and slowly supplying equipment such as masts, sails, centre boards, boom and ultimately rudder so that students developed a deep seated understanding of the forces that acted on a boat and the controls available. The RYA’s ‘five essentials’ in the dinghy scheme tries to deliver the equivalent knowledge. I suspect the Glenan’s approach could be resource and time intensive, but I’m sure it pays dividends – and I’ve seen plenty of sailing school groups using elements of it whilst we’ve been here.

The Glenan

We arrived in the Glenan late morning and initially anchored in about 3m of water to the west of Penfret. We had lunch and I fitted the outboard on the tender. I almost never tow the tender with an engine on, and take the engine off every night after a memorable childhood experience of waking on mid river piles at Bucklers Hard (now sadly pontoons joined to the main marina) to discover that the rear half of the Avon dinghy had deflated lowering the 2hp Yamaha 2 stroke outboard (a great little machine) into the water overnight. A fresh water flush and drying out and it was actually fine.

I took the tender up to Saint Nicholas, dodging fleet after fleet of sailing school dinghies – which felt odd given that we were are 10 miles offshore. It was a bit bumpy upwind against a small chop and with the boat on the plane at about 12-15 kts I had to sit on the floor, and play the throttle to stay secure and keep everything balanced. I was quite enjoying myself. Once in ‘La Chambre’ the moorings on the south side of the island the little chop, that was a little uncomfortable where we were anchored, eased up and, to my surprise for a Friday in August, there were many free moorings. So I motored the mile and a half back to Trouper and we lifted the hook and towed the dinghy (the first time ever with the engine on, I think!) up to the moorings. Once secure we took the tender ashore onto Saint Nicholas for a look around.

Once we’d clambered up from the side of the rough concrete jetty where we’d tied up with some other dinghies the first shock was the crowds. We got ashore as the queues started to form for the last couple of tourist boats back to the mainland, and there were hundreds of people queuing clearly keen not to miss the last ride home. Under foot it was deep soft sand which turned into wooden walkways to protect the delicate fauna once we got clear of the few buildings on the island. There were still lots of people around. After a lap of the island we retreated to the boat, had dinner and watched some of the Netflix documentary about the Tour de France – it seemed fitting.

Queue for the Verdette home.

Bay on the North side with wing foil school

Walkway to beach over dunes

Verdettes queuing with dinghy fleet in the distance.

The following morning (Saturday) we picked up the anchor and headed to the east and then north of St Nicholas to regain the deep water. As we did it one of the big verdettes steamed past us heading straight for a row of rocks, only to confidently motor through a 30m wide gap at a steady 10kts. We stuck to a bigger gap.

Once clear we made our way across Benodet bay to arrive at Benodet with the start of the rise of the tide to explore the Odet river, which all the pilot books call out as very pretty indeed. Once we’d got under the 30m air draft bridge (our rig is a bit over 20m with the instruments and antennas on the top), we headed on up the river. There’d been no wind at all so we’d motored all the way, and in the process our nice big alternator has taken the battery from 65%, to over 85% at the entrance to the river. By the end of the afternoon the batteries were at 100% once more. We worked up the river on the tide and the wooded banks steepened and the river narrowed. We stopped for a late lunch on some visitors moorings but we were too big to stay there overnight and we carried on upriver to explore a little side creek, which the pilots reported as lovely spot for the night. It was gorgeous but with two other boats in there and not a lot of depth there just wasn’t room for us, so we headed back out to the main river.

Anse de St Cadou – our possible anchorage

We tried to anchor in the river nearby a couple of times but the bottom was bare rock scoured clean by the tide – there is a huge flow in the river – and we couldn’t get the anchor to bite. The muddier spots were either too shallow or occupied. So we headed down river as the tide started to ease and found a spot to anchor for the night just before the bridge. I deflated the tender and stowed it back in the forepeak, which is rather full of kit and toys. As an aside when I came to use the tender in Etel I checked the pressure of the tubes and floor with the new electric pump, having inflated them by foot pump and it very quickly got them up to the proper pressure. I’ve high hopes for the new pump.

We left at about 0715 on Sunday morning to head out of Benodet bay, past Pointe de Penmarc’h and out towards the Raz du Seine. We were motor sailing in very little breeze and what little there was was on our nose once we turned north at Pointe de Penmarc’h.

Our passage plan for Sunday

Most of the way to the Raz we saw evidence of pod of dolphins hunting: lots of dorsal fins breaking the water and turning rapidly with frenzied fish jumping to the delight of packs of gulls. We also had them come and join us repeatedly, and I finally got some photos and a video – we’ve seen them at some point most days this trip.

Pair of Common Dolphins alongside

More dolphins at the bow

And some more dolphins..

And again…

We arrived, as planned at the Raz as the tide turned in our favour, but even then it was quite bumpy for a couple of miles as the tide whistles between the island and the headland, with a ridge of rocks extending out underwater.

Trouper doing her thing when faced by an unruly wave in the Raz.

The Pointe du Raz

After that it was a relatively simple 12 nm or so north and round a headland into Cameret, just before the entrance to the Rade de Brest. We’d picked up a small vibration that you could feel through the boat and was very noticeable on the wheel. We tried going astern a couple of times and the vibration intensified. Clearly there was something on the prop. I was bracing myself to get a diver or a boat lift when we got in, and trying to justify it to myself as at least we’d get the hull cleaned too (reducing drag). Approaching the marina once the sails were down I tried going astern one more time, mainly to check that I’d got manoeuvring control and after a moment of more acute vibration the vibration stopped and Kathryn reported seeing some seaweed appearing in our wash. After that all seemed well, so hopefully that problem is resolved.

Sadly the remote control for the autopilot also stopped working during the afternoon: it turns on works when the battery cover is off, but not when it is on and the device is thus waterproof. Hardly ideal. I’ll have to see if I can get it repaired as it’s 20 years old and not readily replaceable – modern stuff works to a different set of standards and replacing the autopilot could lead you into replacing the whole instrument system as the current pilot is tightly integrated into the B&G H2000 Hercules processor. And the current displays won’t work with new processors so you could quite easily end up with a £20k bill to replace all of our, admittedly old, very high end instruments. However there is a firm in Lymington who I’m pretty sure will be able to help.

August 12, 2025
Morbihan

We’d chosen the anchorage on the Auray as it was the spot favoured by George Millar in his book Oyster River about a summer cruising the Morbihan. It’s a lovely read (though out of print) describing a summer on his 50′ wooden yawl sometime in the late 50s. Both he, and his wife Isabel, are extraordinary characters. He had been captured in North Africa during the war, escaped during a prisoner transfer during the collapse of Italy, and made his way on foot across France and Spain to escape back to the UK from Portugal. Once back in the UK he joined the SOE and was dropped back into occupied France to support the resistance. He’s spending the summer recuperating following a riding accident that left him with serious internal injuries when his horse fell landing on him… so they sailed from Plymouth to the Morbihan to take it easy.

Sunday saw us gently sail back down the river under headsail alone and across the entrance to pick up a mooring that was across the headland from Port Du Crouesty on the inside of the gulf. We’d agreed to meet our friend there in the morning, and to spend the day with her on the Morbihan.

Monday morning saw me in the tender picking her up from the slipway, before we spent the day doing a lap of Ile Aux Moines, following a lunch stop at the head of Ile Ilur. One of the innovations of Sunday afternoon had been discovering the SHOM Tidal Stream Atlas that covers the gulf could be purchased as a PDF online. Having navigated the checkout and download process in French we now had the tidal information that made Monday’s tour possible. The tidal flows are huge and being only a few minutes late or early for a turn of tide can stop you in your tracks – and it did on Sunday when we were a little early at the entrance and motoring at 7kts saw us stand still until we could slide sideways into slower moving water.

SHOM tidal stream atlas of the gulf – 1 hour before high water

We spent another night on the mooring buoy before heading up to Vannes up a river off the North of the Morbihan. It proved to be a lovely town and we spent a couple of nights there, we did some laundry, and had a great meal at another happy Michelin. On Thursday we headed down the river, across the gulf and out to Port de Croesty once more. Our local friend had picked up a new electric dinghy pump for us, as our current one had died when inflating the tender up the Auray at the weekend. The old one was ten years old and a bit of research identified had been rather overtaken by technology. The new pump of choice was stocked nearby and she’d offered to collect it for us. We met up on Thursday afternoon and she announced that we’d been invited to her brother-in-laws for dinner. He is a sailor and keeps a boat in the marina. We had a lovely evening in a French home, and drank a little too much.

On Friday we headed to Trinite sur Mer, which is only a few miles away and a yachting mecca. Our favoured pilot book (written by the late Peter Cumberlidge) raves about the marina, which is an oddity as the author clearly prefers a night at anchor whenever possible. We got a snug berth tucked behind the wavescreen which has pontoons for race boats on the seaward side. There are two Ultimes, an Ocean 50 trimaran, a 50′ Offshore racer of a modern scow design, an IMOCA and half a dozen Class 40s all tied up there. I’d been struggling with a cold for a couple of days and rather crashed for a few days. We have had a little wander around the place and it is lovely – there’s the gallery of the famed French sailing/sea photographer Philip Plisson and some great gear shops, as well as sailmakers and all the usual fantastic food shops of a French town.

Class 40s (all with Starlink Mini dishes)

Scow bowed 50’er

Some more of the fleet

One of the Ultimes moving into her berth (with Trouper just over the wall).

The local lifeboat has been busy. They are just down the pontoon from us and were out at 0130 on Sunday for a search, then again for most of the day on an exercise (seems like Sundays are lifeboat training days the world over), and then again on Sunday evening for what looked like a Medivac from Houat, one of the offlying islands. Today (Monday) they were out again in the evening to tow a boat back into the harbour.

Sadly I also got the news this week that after about a year doing battle with cancer one of my team back at work had died. He was a lovely man whose sense of fun belied his age: he was the antithesis of the grumpy old man. Murray Stephen: you will be greatly missed.

August 5, 2025
Weather

The weather has dominated the most of the last week. Douarnenez was lovely but the swell into the visitors’ pontoon for the second and third nights resulted in lot of groaning warps, if no actual discomfort (Kathryn might disagree as the groaning warps kept her awake). On Wednesday we left reasonably early and headed out for a passage through the Raz du Sein. It was a long motor sail to windward to get to the headland and drop south through the Raz. The Raz du Sein is a notorious tidal race, but other than a bit of slightly confused seas on the approach we passed through smoothly – though we did test out our newly recanvassed cockpit spray hood – which provided a very warm an snug spot in the cockpit. It only saved us from one wave’s worth of spray – but that’s quite enough for it to have earned it’s keep.

We ended the day in Loctudy, a marina in a small town south (and east) of Pointe de Penmarc’h. The pilot books and almanac all observe that the Pointe de Penmarc’h is the gateway to better weather as you move into South Biscay. It was glorious in Loctudy though the first morning we were there is was very foggy ’till about midday.The marina had nice facilities and an excellent chandlers that had stock of all sorts of specialist parts: needless to say they had the belts that I’d been looking for, and had several interesting looking brackets for clamping onto stainless tube, and lengths of tubing. I was hopeful I’d be able to cobble some sort of temporary starlink mount, so I took the bits of the broken one in, and with a fair bit of gesticulation explained the issue. This is when things took a turn for the better: the bits were whisked off into a back office, there was a bit of a discussion, a man in overalls appeared and joined in. I was led into a workshop behind the chandlers where they clearly fixed outboards and the like and went someway to explain the stock: these were people who made things… 20 minutes later my new friend in overalls had drilled a hole though the fitting and installed a nice big bolt to hold it together. With the addition of a little glue to stop it rotating around the new bolt the job was done and our Starlink is back in its spot on the aft rail.

Starlink back in it’s spot

On Friday we hopped across the bay to Concarneau. There was little sailing to be had, as it was very still, and there was a little bit of a deadline to get there before the market shut down at 1300. This is also a TransEurope marina (a federation of independent marinas that offer a 50% discount for up to 5 nights to berth holders from another member), which was sort of planned as it looked like we’d be staying a few nights, to wait out some weather. It’s been moderately windy, but has rained hard on and off for the past few days (I write this on Monday afternoon) and there has been some serious (over 5m) swell offshore. We’ve explored the town, it’s fishing museum in the island citadel in the centre of the harbour, and taken the bus to Pont Aven on a sightseeing trip whilst dodging the worst of the weather. Assuming the weather forecast delivers then tomorrow should be fine, a bit on the still side, but will let us move on to Lorient and towards the Baie de Quiberon. This bay looks like a truly lovely spot with lots anchorages and the Gulf de Morbihan, an inland sea full of islands accessed through a narrow entrance which has been on my list of places to visit ever since we started researching the trip.

July 21, 2025
Grey in Roscoff

We left Cherbourg on Wednesday, filling up with diesel before we left at the self service pumps. The 300Euro maximum for a card transaction filled one tank and took the other to 92% so we left it at that and headed off. We took a fair tide to Cap de la Hauge and saw a fair bit of water over the deck, though never in the cockpit, in the overfalls as we motor sailed into the Alderney race.

Our straight line course to Treguier took us down the Big Russel channel between Sark and Herm passing lots of fond memories – more than one involving food on a beach – before a fairly dull 40 mile stretch towards the French coast with the engine thumping away all the time. It was uneventful except for some dolphins joining us mid afternoon just after I’d gone for a nap – Kathryn had no hesitation in banging on the cockpit sole to summon me back on deck, and I was glad of it. As ever the dilemma was whether to just soak up the moment or to go and find a camera to get a record. This time we both settled on just enjoying the moment, which was over all too soon.

Tregieur entrance is a bit wiggly and needed some attention at the end of a long day – we were easily 12 hours in by then, though had both had naps.

But once in, and up the river a bit, it is very snug and sheltered. We elected to anchor as we planned to be off the following day. We picked a lovely spot a little downriver from the town and across the river from a Chateau. A quick shower followed by a long sleep was in order.

I am very pleased to report that the coolant leak seems to have been a loose hose clip on the shut off valve for the hot water calorifier (domestic hot water is heated using the engine cooling circuit, when the engine is running, or, on Trouper, by an immersion heater when plugged into the shore, or from our diesel heating). We’ll probably now carry the remaining 4.5l of coolant around as a talisman against leaks for the foreseeable future.

On Thursday morning we had a leisurely start to the day and I got our newish solar panel array out for it’s first real test in bright conditions.

The FlinKite solar array is very neat – it hoists out of it’s storage bag on a spinnaker halyard and plugs in on the back of the forward dorade box. It has a notional 200W capacity, and can be orientated to point at the sun and operate as efficiently as possible. Without any real care in pointing it, it was generating 180-200W, as you can see from the display. For us that’s great news as it means it will outpace our electricity consumption at anchor and remove any need to run the engine for battery charging. At sea there is a big 225 Amp alternator managed by the battery management system that can very quickly put charge back into the 660 Amp hour LFP battery bank. The great thing about LFP battery chemistries is their very high charge acceptance: it will accept pretty much as much as we can generate.

The holding was excellent in the river and despite all the pilot books’ warnings about the strength of the tide, albeit at neaps, we barely troubled the anchor all night. I put 40m of chain out and even when the tide turned I don’t think we pulled it straight in the mud. It certainly took some cleaning.

Anchor Watch Display

We left on Thursday lunchtime for a smaller hop down the coast to Roscoff where we plan to spend a few days, partly to do chores such as laundry, and partly to let some weather blow through. Finally on this leg we were able to actually sail for at least half the passage and were making a nice 6.4kts in 10kts of breeze on a beam reach for a period. It was so lovely to be at sea without the thrum of the engine. Kathryn made a lovely dinner of trout fillets, new potatoes and veg which I’m sure tasted all the better for the noise of the water gurgling past Trouper’s transom.

July 5, 2025
Lifeboating won’t let me go

I stood down form the RNLI lifeboat crew at Tower after over 20 years on the crew last month. As we left for Cherbourg we found a young man at about 0615 in the morning swimming well over 2 miles offshore. He was struggling a bit and was glad of a ride back into Chichester… so we turned round and went back the way we came.

I phoned the coastguard to report what we’d found and try to arrange some sort of reception for him when we got ashore – he’d set off from West Wittering beach at 0430, and all his clothes and possessions were still on the beach. We could only land him at Hayling, and it’s a good two hours by car from one to the other, around the harbour, and all he had were a pair of swimming shorts. As I was speaking to the coastguard watch leader he wasn’t initially sure what to do as the guy seemed fine and was just in need of a taxi (and some clothes), but as we spoke he got a report in that a suicide note had been found by the police that related to the guy. That urge had clearly passed, as whilst a bit cold and glad of a cuppa, he’d been swimming for shore, was glad of the assistance (and very apologetic) and borrowed my phone to try and call his dad (though he didn’t get through). We headed into Sparkes marina and waited for the cavalry to arrive. They had trouble raising me by phone as it was so early my phone was still in sleep mode…. Sussex police turned up first, followed by HMCG’s rescue team (well one of them in a truck). The lovely woman police office from Sussex was torn between trying to make sure she did the right thing, ie keeping the guy safe, and the logistical problem she had that whilst he’d set off from Sussex we were all now standing in Hampshire, which has a different constabulary. She put the young guy in the back of her Sussex Police car with one of the coastguard’s blankets, and we left them to it. Only to find that the tide had now dropped too far for us to get out of Sparke’s marina… well we got out and then ran gently aground in the channel 20 minutes before low water, about 10 feet from a channel mark where we waited… The deep water turned out to be about another boat length ahead of us.

After an otherwise uneventful passage motor-sailing we tied up in Cherbourg at about 2130 local time – several hours later than we’d aimed for with our 0500 start. We spent a day recuperating and taking it easy (we’re both fighting off colds, and had been cooked in the sun on Monday) and I discovered that the engine coolant levels had dropped a fair bit on the trip. The engine had run hard for over 10 hours, but it’s meant to be a closed system. None of the local chandlers had the right coolant (and I’d not quite got round to buying any spare before we left) but on Wednesday I found a motor factors round the back of Carrefour with the right stuff (G12, if anyone cares). I think that the leak was from one of the hose joints on the engine, and that with such a slow dribble (we’d only lost about 300ml) it had all evaporated in the hot engine compartment. The hose clips are all a bit tighter now.

Tuesday wasn’t a great day: we were both feeling a bit grotty, and slightly grumpy; I had found the coolant problem; and then when taping up the split pins on the backstay to stop them cutting anyone using the boarding ladder I knocked the starlink dish only to have the nice 3d printed mounting bracket I’d made it fail. In hindsight, its good that it happened then, as it was clearly going to fail, and at least I was able to recover all the parts and not drop anything in the harbour. It didn’t feel like it at the time. To round things off I dropped a nice Wera stainless allen key in the harbour whilst unbolting the bracket. Amazon will have a nice new one waiting for me in London, but I had to buy a ‘cheap’ set in the chandlery to finish the job… I made the bracket as I just couldn’t find a commercial solution that did what I needed so there isn’t an easy replacement which leaves us only able to use the Starlink when at rest and able to perch the dish safely in the cockpit. The cables, that I’d so carefully run on Sunday morning, are now fixed and rather limit our options.

I did get to have a look around one of the French SNSM lifeboats though. It was Goury’s boat and on Tuesday they’d launched at 0400 to a British sailing boat that had been in collision with a small freighter, presumably somewhere off Cap de la Hague. They’d towed the boat into Cherbourg and put it straight into the slings of the travel hoist, as there was a decent sized hole on the starboard quarter right on the waterline. There were two decent sized pumps on board – one the lifeboat’s (looked like the same big diesel pump that the RNLI use) and I think the other from a helicopter (it had a big lifting lug on it) who I suspect had also recovered the crew, as they weren’t about. One of the helicopter crew turned up in a flightsuit, presumably to recover the pump. The lifeboat moored up astern of us as the crew headed off for a well earned brunch (it was mid morning by then) but on their return one of them was asking about Trouper and we got into a conversation, and then I got the tour. It was a very nice bit of kit, only a year old, aluminium, slipway launched, and 17m long. It carries a tender under the aft deck and has a big hydraulic towing reel as well as powered bollards that would be the envy of many an RNLI crew. The deck provides a decent sized well protected working area – it seemed really well thought out, though I’d swap its props for water jets. The cabin was air-conditioned too which was very welcome on Tuesday.

So a mixed start to the trip, but a life saved (and Kathryn’s first) and a nice meal tonight make it seem rather better, and a lovely text message from the parents of the guy we fished out rather reframes things.

July 2, 2025
Trouper’s Atlantic France Trip Preparations

Over the last few years I’ve invested a lot of time, effort, and a fair bit of money into getting Trouper set up for extended cruising. We’ve installed a new engine, a large Lithium Iron Phosphate battery bank with a large alternator to charge it, and a hostable array of solar panels. Our plan has been to spend a couple of months away this summer, partly as an end in itself and also to test out how we might like spending months at a time on the boat at some point in the future.

The last few weeks have seen a slightly frenzied sprint to the line. Inevitably I finished some parts of this this morning as we got ready to leave the marina. Last week saw the very just in time delivery of the new bed linen, the renewal of the sprayhood canvas and some fitted cockpit cushions. The previous few weeks have seen some repainting of the coachroof’s blue stripe and the fabrication of a bracket to hold a starlink mini dish on the stern of the boat. Completing the starlink install, and reassembling the outboard motor’s mounting bracket (with some new bits) were the last jobs this morning.

We slipped our berth at 1515 today (29 June) and left through Birdham’s lock at free flow (the top of the tide where both inner and outer gates are open at once). We motored a whole mile to anchor in the harbour in the Thorney channel. We aim to leave at about 0530 tomorrow for Cherbourg – I’ve send the French PAF their entry form and completed the UK online departure notification – so hopefully all the admin will go smoothly.

June 16, 2025