Monday 29 April 2019

Not So Much Of A Safe Haven

We had a good week visiting Lincoln and Hull in the week leading up to the Easter weekend. Moonshine ran well and we had a very enjoyable break, until yet another yacht ran into us at Hull Marina, damaging our bow roller and bending the release pin. The weather was unbelievably calm, however the unseasoned skipper of yacht 'Swallow' decided to moor in his allocated berth opposite ours bows first, whilst not keeping a watchful eye on what his stern was doing! How wrong were we to assume we were in a safe haven. We immediately contacted the duty lock keeper for him to log the incident, and we followed this up with an email requesting Hull Marina confirm this had been done...however no email was returned to us...

Peter rectified the damage by returning to the boat on Easter Monday and successfully managed to straighten the bow roller out. However, rather disappointingly the yachtsman from Grimsby and Cleethorpes Yacht Club, has yet to contact us as promised one week on. I have told Peter to contact him requesting his insurance details to put the 'shitters' up him! It also begs the question had we not witnessed the impact, would he have admitted liability...we think NOT! Bloody infuriating with the inconvenience of it all, but it is sorted now, and it is probably a good job that it is quite soft metal to bear the brunt of any impact, as opposed to damaging the anchor, winch or glass fibre.
Prior to our holiday we did purchase a 24" LG tv (non smart) from Amazon, which fit perfectly on our bulkhead bracket. We haven't had much use from it yet, since it has been hooked up to the Xbox over Easter courtesy of a gaming mad teenager. Whilst in Lincoln, the tv signal was non existent due to the high rise university buildings, which in turn infuriated Peter as he does like both the national and local tv weather to compare everything tally's with the internet weather before either going out on  the river or to sea. After further investigation and recommendation, we purchased upon our return home an SLX Digidome outdoor digital aerial from Amazon for £29.99.


Saturday was mostly spent installing the mushroom aerial, with several hours spent with Peter in the 'bosom' of his engine room feeding coaxial wire through tight spaces.
It appears to give very good reception with a lot more channels being received than our old aerial, however it's real test will be when we return to a weak signal area.