Ok, so I last left you having waved 'au revoir' to Chuckles the Pinball Mooring Wizard and said hello to Chris, our new Skipper. We knew the Saturday was likely to be over the Force 4 we were limited to by our insurance, so we aimed to have a slight lie in and then start a bow to stern going over of the barge under the guidance of Chris to ensure we were in good shape to tackle the high seas (well, the channel at least).

There was plenty to do. Securing the decks, lashing booms, inspecting the generator/batteries and importantly for a night transit ensuring the external lighting suite was up to spec. Missing our stern steaming light was a major omission so Chris rigged a feed from one of the nav lights to a rear 135 degree light which was rigged on the stern.

One of the other minor snafu's was that we had gone through the 20 litres of lube oil for the engine and needed to locate a very specific type of oil (CF2 for 2 stroke diesels), which is, due to the nature of the number of engines using said oil, was like looking for the proverbial rocking horse poop. Rainbow coloured, sparkly, magical musical rocking unicorn poop... Since we couldn't move without it, we did end up paying over the odds for the oil but needs must when the devil drives.

Considerable time was spent ensuring the decks were clear and everything lashed down which could move, the engine oil filter was checked and found only to have mild contamination so was replaced and kept as a spare while the prefilter was removed, flushed through and refitted properly. In my haste and gagging on mouldy gunky diesel I had managed to seat it incorrectly previously.

It looked like the Sunday was going to be a blowout too but since I had to do a final read through and tweak of my MSc dissertation and finish the list of contents/appendices and get it off to the printers, we needed a day of no jobs so we managed to knock most things into touch. The Sunday disappeared in a whirl of grammar corrections, appendices and tedium. There are only so many times one can read the same document without finding it incredibly tedious...

Monday morning dawned and we slipped our mooring, having been left by the fishing trawlers the night before there was plenty of room to manoeuvre. We headed out into the channel and ended up hitting a foul tide which slowed our progress.

The next two and a half days involved roughly 2 hour watches, checking the engine every 2-3 hours, topping up lube oil on the engine and lube oil auxilliary pump, keeping the batteries topped up with the generator (there is no engine driven alternator due to its age), oiling the various bits on the engine at regular intervals, keeping the grease pressure up to the stern propeller gland and just making sure it keeps plodding along. We both learnt a lot from Chris about night navigation, tides, traffic, steaming lights, rules of the sea etc so it was an enlightening experience. For two and a half days I could not stop listening to the engine note, thinking at any point it was going to stop working. The injection of adrenalin and sinking stomach feeling every time it skipped a beat or changed tone even when I was about to drop off to a fitful short hour or two of sleep meant that by the time we motored into Portalnd Marina I had pretty much reached the end of my endurance. I have never been good with lack of sleep but adrenalin, caffeinated tea and biscuits (various) had kept me going. The weather and seas remained cooperative and at times beautiful and somewhat haunting in the half light of sunset. Most unnerving was at one point around 0300 on the second night where I looked out of the starboard wheelhouse door and could see a few light in the distance reflected on an almost perfect mirror surface of jet black sea.

I still had plenty to do post shut down including the horrible job of emptying the exhaust manifolds of hot, sticky, black oil residue before it solidified and making sure everything was ready to be left for a week or 2. A shower was welcome reward for our efforts and we left Zeelandia, safe and sound after acquitting herself splendidly, although somewhat slowly...

We still have 300nm to go to the final mooring position in Portishead, so we just have to wait for a skipper to become available and a good weather window. We await the final leg, suitably prepared now, but equally nervous. One last push to get Zee to her home where the really hard work starts (and that's saying something)...

Until next time dear reader...