# Trouper’s Blog > Occasional ramblings from a Swan 43 ## Posts - [Fresh Water pump rebuild and new mounts](https://trouper.uk/2026/08/04/fresh-water-pump-rebuild-and-new-mounts/): One of the spring jobs that I’d not written up but what has made a huge difference is some work on our freshwater pump. We have a Marco UP3/e gear based pump. It’s excellent and varies it’s speed to match the flow demand. I’d hoped it would self prime, but in our installation it doesn’t and needs a knurled bleed screw opening for a moment when we change tanks. After six or more years use the need to prime it had increased and it might struggle to empty the tanks. That was partly due to some deposits on the valves on […] - [Swallows](https://trouper.uk/2026/08/03/swallows/): The start of our summer trip has been a bit leisurely: I’ve been slowly recovering from having been ill for most of July, so we’ve been taking it slowly. On the first Sunday morning, whilst still in Birdham, we were awoken by a lot of Swallow song. I got up to put the kettle on and was somewhat taken aback to meet a swallow in the saloon, who’d just flown in via the foredeck hatch. He (it was foolhardy enough for me to assume it was male) saw me, and gently turned and retreated back to the forepeak and back out […] - [Working From Boat, and dodging the London heat.](https://trouper.uk/2026/08/03/working-from-boat-and-dodging-the-london-heat/): We spent the first full week of July trying to hide from the heat in London on the boat. Sunday 5/7 saw us leave Birdham for the Beaulieu river, where we exercised our RCC membership perk of a free mooring in the river. We stayed a couple of nights and on the Monday night took the tender ashore at the Royal Southampton Yacht Club’s Gin’s Farm landing for a nice walk ashore where we got to watch some farm workers rounding up cattle in the marsh, in order to put ear tags on the newest calves. We were both working, courtesy […] - [Pigstick Mk2](https://trouper.uk/2026/07/16/pigstick-mk2/): I was very pleased with the pigstick. It did the job beautifully. But as we left Cherbourg it seemed not to be turning so freely. Once out of the harbour, on the way home, I lowered it to see that was going on. It turned out that the lovely roller bearings that I’d thought were stainless only had stainless shells, and that the lower one, that can sit in water, had rusted up solid. Mark 2 was clearly required. Shopping around I couldn’t find any suitable stainless needle roller bearings but could get some standard all stainless bearings – trouble is […] - [Watching 14s go in circles](https://trouper.uk/2026/07/14/watching-14s-go-in-circles/): We’ve been members of Itchenor SC for about 15 years. We joined when we got involved in sailing XODs – wonderful Edwardian day boats that are raced very hard indeed. We’ve remained members partly because I’ve always planned to go back to sailing XODs when I get time, but also to support the place as it is the most extraordinary dinghy club. I’m used to places like the Hythe sailing club of my teenage years, or Wilsonian on the Medway from my 20s. These are basic places (Wilsonan didn’t even have mains electricity) with big dinghy parks and catering, bar and […] - [Toilet pump, and other odd jobs](https://trouper.uk/2026/06/23/toilet-pump-and-other-odd-jobs/): Trouper has rather clever Blakes Lavac toilets. Unlike the more common Jabsco marine toilets there is no change over valve between flush and rinse. The Lavac design simply has a large diaphragm pump on the discharge side, a high loop with a small vent on the inlet side and seals under the list and seat. When the pump runs it creates a vacuum in the bowl and draws seawater in to flush it. When the pump stops the vent breaks the seal after a little while and the lid can be raised. The beauty is in the simplicity – and is […] - [Cherbourg in May](https://trouper.uk/2026/06/16/cherbourg-in-may/): It was all looking so good – we just got onto the platform at Waterloo on time to catch the 1705 to Southampton Airport Parkway and on to Universals where we had a table booked for dinner at Riverside Social at 1945. We put our bags in the rack and sat down, just in time for the guard to announce that a person had just been hit by a train near Vauxhall and the power was off all lines out of Waterloo to allow the emergency services access. Someone else and their family was clearly having a much worse Friday evening, […] - [New Displays](https://trouper.uk/2026/06/06/new-displays/):  I fitted a new larger computer display to support the new radar and because the new C-Map Reveal X charting in Expedition (which is excellent) now supports 4K monitors. Removing the old radar display had left a hole in the nav station bulkhead that I had to make and veneer a new panel to fill. I was quite pleased with the results, although I had to move the radio handset to make room for the monitor. I’ve also acquired a Victron 4LTE device on ebay. It’s now installed but not working correctly yet but it will establish a always on network […] - [Last minute maintenance](https://trouper.uk/2026/06/06/last-minute-maintenance/): Before we could get away for the late may Bank holiday there was a pile of work to be done: the usual spring clean below and cleaning all the upholstery. I was also able to finally fix the forward bunk hinges. One had failed on each side and Nautor had supplied some replacements over the winter. Sadly they were close but not quite the same with two of the screw holes slghtly smaller and with a different spacing. These screwed into a tapped 5mm thick stainless plate that is in turn bolted to the bunk frame and acts as a spacer. […] - [Late May Bank Holiday](https://trouper.uk/2026/06/06/late-may-bank-holiday/): Once Trouper was back afloat with a working propeller I was keen to get her off the mooring and to actually start to make use of her this year. Before we could leave on the Saturday there was a chunk of last minute work to be done that I’ve described in Last minute maintenance and New Displays. That filled most of Saturday but we did manage to creep out into the Harbour on the evening tide after dinner and spend the night at anchor in Thorney Channel – one of my favourite spots in the harbour. On Sunday we left in […] - [Over engineering a pig stick](https://trouper.uk/2026/06/03/over-engineering-a-pig-stick/): I became a member of the Royal Cruising Club (RCC) this year. The club has been very welcoming and has a thriving online community, as well as regular events and meet ups. It is of course the home of the RCC Pilotage Foundation, the publishers of most of the pilot books I’ve depended upon for years. I hope, in the future, to get involved in producing and maintaining these. The club is pretty relaxed, but does have a thing about flag etiquette. Members may choose to fly an undefaced blue ensign, which is a privilege rarely afforded to Sailing Clubs, but […] - [Propeller Pain](https://trouper.uk/2026/05/19/propellor-pain/): One of the over winter projects was tackling the vibration we’d noticed from the propellor last summer. It had got bad enough that we’d had a diver check that it wasn’t fouled. We have a Max Prop. It’s a clever feathering prop design, where the pitch can be adjusted – and even be different ahead and astern. It can also be easily adjusted between left and right handed rotation. When under sail the prop will automatically feather to a very low drag configuration, and the pitch is wound back on when the engine is put in gear. Once we got Trouper […] - [Instrument System Project](https://trouper.uk/2026/05/02/instrument-system-project/): After I wrote the last post I spoke with a very helpful guy at B&G who explained a bit about the N2k/Fastnet bridge (H5000 Fastnet Interface). It would appear that it should be supplying more data to our N2K network than it is, which suggests our H2000 Performance processor isn’t correctly configured – which isn’t a huge surprise. He explained that the data transmission rates on Fastnet is much lower than N2K and they’d not bridged data to avoid swamping the Fastnet bus. I’m not sure that really makes sense – as a throttled feed of the data that they’ll already […] - [Winter Upgrades](https://trouper.uk/2026/01/01/winter-upgrades/): Trouper went into Nautor’s Hamble yard for a mini-refit in late October 2025. The main job was to remove the rig and renew the rather elderly rod rigging. There were a few jobs that it made sense otherwise do at the same time, such as replacing the radar, as it is only possible to re-run that cable with the rig out of the boat. I’ve subsequently tackled a few more jobs. - [Lessons learned and what to change](https://trouper.uk/2025/12/31/lessons-learned-and-what-to-change/): This post has taken a while to be published so describes the autumn 2025 position, on our return from the Brittany trip. This trip had a few purposes: So how’ve we done? The first two I think we’ve achieved. We’re still talking to each other, and talking about future trips, indeed we’re both very clear that we’d like to spend more time on the Atlantic coast and explore further. There’s an awful lot to like about this coast, and whilst I would like to explore the Mediterranean in future I can see why this might make a better long term home […] - [And Trouper is back on her home berth.](https://trouper.uk/2025/09/01/and-trouper-is-back-on-her-home-berth/): We left Poole on Monday afternoon and headed for Lymington, where we arrived in time for some excellent fish and chips. We stayed in the Yacht Haven, rather than the Berthon, as they had room. My father used to keep a boat here in the late 90s that I used to sail regularly. The marina has expanded somewhat since then and is now the home to a lot of charter power boats as well as the local sailing boats. The size of the boats, especially the powerboats is surprising, especially after the French coast where we were on the big side, […] - [Back in England](https://trouper.uk/2025/08/26/back-in-england/): We left Treguier at about 0930 on Friday and, once clear of the river (and all its off-lying rocks), set a course for the Cap de la Hague, the South Western tip of the Cotenin peninsular. The straight line track takes you a bit close to some rocks half way to Guernsey and then straight through the Big Russel channel between Guernsey and Sark. On the way you get a good sight of pretty much all the other Channel Islands. We arrived in the Big Russell as the tide turned in our favour and started to push us towards the gap […] - [Interlude on instruments, and a possible project.](https://trouper.uk/2025/08/24/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. […] - [Spent Hurricanes and adapting plans](https://trouper.uk/2025/08/21/spent-hurricanes-and-adapting-plans/): We’d been planning to head towards St. Malo from Treguier with a stop in Saint-Quay-Portrieux, which I spent a night in some dozen years ago during Trouper’s first summer tour. That summer Kathryn and I had been beaten by the weather in our attempts to get to the Scillies but had had a glorious time exploring Falmouth harbour, and had gone out with my family from Fowey, and hove to off Gribbin Head to scatter my father’s ashes in a bit of water he loved sailing. He never saw Trouper – but I’m very confident he’d have approved. Anyway Kathryn and […] - [The Rose Coast and timetables.](https://trouper.uk/2025/08/19/the-rose-coast-and-timetables/): We spent a single night back in Roscoff, having arrived via the passage inshore of Ile de Batz. This was a recommendation from my friend Andy who had enjoyed my account of getting caught out on the outboarnd journey, having done exactly the same himself. With a decent rise of tide the passage is simple, but you don’t want to be plugging a foul tide, as it fair whistles through the gap. Once we’d got in I found a nice description of the passage in the pilot book. I’m pleased to report that that is exactly what we’d done, figuring it […] - [Risk perception and back in the English Channel](https://trouper.uk/2025/08/16/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 […] - [Glenan and the Raz with company](https://trouper.uk/2025/08/12/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 […] - [Starting to Head Home](https://trouper.uk/2025/08/11/starting-to-head-home/): We left Trinité-Sur-Mer on Tuesday heading for Etel. Etel is to the North of the Quiberon peninsular and this marks the start of our progress back towards home and the end of our trip. But that’s not till the start of September so there’s no time pressure and we plan to meander our way back. Etel is interesting as the entrance to the river has a shifting bar and there is a huge tidal flow that can create difficult conditions. The deep water passage moves around too much to be marked in the conventional way, with buoys, so they have a […] - [Morbihan](https://trouper.uk/2025/08/05/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 […] - [Baie de Quiberon (and Fastnets)](https://trouper.uk/2025/07/30/baie-de-quiberon-and-fastnets/): We left Concarneau for Lorient on Tuesday, with Trouper making an easy 6 knots in a gentle breeze. Lorient is a huge harbour, behind a narrow entrance and we elected to moor in Port Louis, tucked in on the eastern side of the entrance. There’s a water taxi into the centre of town and we spent a happy day on Wednesday exploring the town. There’s a big sailing exhibition in a building named after Eric tabarly the great Breton sailor who in many ways established offshore sailing, especially short handed in French culture. The museum is adjacent to the enormous submarine […] - [Weather](https://trouper.uk/2025/07/21/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 […] - [A long weekend](https://trouper.uk/2025/07/14/a-long-weekend/): Friday evening saw one of Kathryn’s former work colleagues and her new partner join us for a few days – carrying two very welcome spare belts for the engine. Whilst chasing the coolant leak I’d noticed that the belt that drives the coolant pump and engine alternator was looking a little frayed and discovered that I’d not, as I thought, got a couple of spares on board. In the end the simplest solution was to have a couple delivered to them. We’d moved the boat into one of Brest’s main two marinas on Friday morning and after a bit of boat […] - [Leaving the English Channel Behind](https://trouper.uk/2025/07/09/leaving-the-english-channel-behind/): We left Roscoff after 4 nights on Tuesday, having waited out some weather – nothing too violent but some rain and it was a bit breezy). We spent one day doing boat admin and laundry, another exploring Roscoff (very good Crepes and local Breton Cidre) and then testing out the Bromptons with a cycle to the next town on Monday. The bikes did well though there were a fair few hills, and whilst it turned out Monday was the town’s closing day we had a nice amble around and found another supplier of excellent crepes. Our neighbour in the marina was […] - [Grey in Roscoff](https://trouper.uk/2025/07/05/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 – […] - [Lifeboating won't let me go](https://trouper.uk/2025/07/02/lifeboating-wont-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 […] - [Trouper's Atlantic France Trip Preparations](https://trouper.uk/2025/06/16/hello-world-2/): 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 […] ## Pages - [Home page](https://trouper.uk/) - [Trips](https://trouper.uk/trips/): For us the point in having a sailing boat it to use it, and to explore new places. Some boats sit in the marina either un-used or activing as a permanent project for fiddling on, but without going to sea. I like to think that we stretch Trouper’s legs as much as we can whilst holding down full time jobs. - [Boat Maintenance](https://trouper.uk/boat-maintenance/): Keeping an old boat in good order gives you a never ending job list. Make that boat a beautifully engineered Swan and the systems are more complex (and expensive) and the standards of the original build set a very high bar for whatever you do. Luckily half the fun of boat ownership, for me, is that sort of work. Growing up in a sailing club that was definitely of the do it yourself mentality has left me with ambitions that, in my fifties, my skills are starting to catch up on. - [Marine Electronics](https://trouper.uk/electronics/) - [Tracking Trouper](https://trouper.uk/location/): I use Saillogger to automatically take a feed of data from our SignalK server, and thus instrument systems. They provide a public interface where you can gain access to basic tracking data. - [Contact](https://trouper.uk/contact/) - [Bibliography](https://trouper.uk/bibliography/): Secret Anchorages of Brittany, Peter Cumberlidge This book is the one that turned me onto the possiblities of Brittany some six or seven years ago. The author sadly died a few years ago and this edition was a work in progress completed by his wife after his death. It isn’t simply a pilot book (and one that pretty much ignores marinas at that) but also a collection of essays about a place, and people, that he clearly loves. Atlantic France, Nick Chervasse (RCCPF) The Royal Cruising Club’s Pilotage Foundation has a close connection to Trouper. Nick, the previous owner was not […] - [About](https://trouper.uk/about/): This blog records Trouper’s travels and the thoughts of her owner’s, Tom and Kathryn. We are UK based and do not sail full time. Trouper is a 1989 Swan 43 designed by Ron Holland. We bought her in November 2013 and have based her out of Birdham Pool, Chichester Harbour ever since. Tom is a central banker for a living, but has been a sailing instructor for over 30 years, holding RYA Dinghy Senior Instructor, Powerboat (and Safety boat)and lapsed Yachtmaster Instructor qualifications. He was crew on the RNLI Tower Lifeboat on the Thames in central London for 23 years. He […] ## Optional - [Agent (MCP protocol)](websites-agents.hostinger.com/trouper.uk/mcp) [comment]: # (Generated by Hostinger Tools Plugin)