Off to the western isles and sailing into mechanical problems.

Saturday 18/5/19

The Old Man of Hoy

A dank and wet day. Until now we had been spoilt with clear skies. We passed the Old Man of Hoy shrouded by low cloud.

The trip across the top of the UK was uneventful, if a little dull, until we reach Cape Wrath. Despite relatively light wind and the tide in our favour, the seas were confused and steep, and coming from astern. Destiny took this in her stride.

As we cleared the Cape the seas settled and we had a smooth ride to Kinlochbervie - a small and isolated harbour on the northwest coast of Scotland.

We took the opportunity to clean the boat and I tried to worked out how to use the washer/dryer. This should have been a simple matter but for some reason the water would not drain away. Having followed the troubleshooting instructions and cleaned out the filter I'll try again later. If all else fails I'll get Jane to work it for me when we return!

All was going well until I turned on the generator. Normally, it runs through its bite and starts instantly. This time, it fired up and then stopped. I attributed this to the microwave being on and a “spike” having caused it to shut down.  I tried again. This time I could smell burning. I shut everything down and had a look inside the engine room. Sure enough a dark grey smoke was coming from within the generator case.  Having established that nothing was on fire, I turned on the engine room blower to fumigate the engine room.  Once the smoke had cleared, an inspection inside the generator sound shield showed smoke stains on the DDC (digital diesel control) box.  We suspect there is a problem with the microprocessor.  Since there is nothing we can do to fix it in Kinlochbervie we decided to leave the detailed inspection for a more appropriate time.  I pulled all the breakers and isolated the generator completely from the rest of the boat and tested various systems to check none had been affected.  All seemed good.

I went to bed thinking about how best to fix this problem but bizarrely had a great nights’ sleep.

Sunday 19/5/19

Leaving Kinlochbervie

Sunday dawned bright and calm and I arose with a clear way ahead. We can manage without the generator and trying to get a Mastervolt engineer with the appropriate spares to come to this remote part of Scotland would be both a lengthy and costly process. We would therefore continue as planned. In the meantime, I would investigate the cause of the fault and organise an engineer to be on hand shortly after we return home.

At 0930 we set off for Stornaway in the Outer Hebrides. No wind and flat calm. After about an hour I almost had a mutiny on my hands. There is no gas on Destiny so boiling a kettle is the only means of making the obligatory cup of tea. We have a small kettle that can run off the inverter but this had decided to stop working.  The large kettle needs the generator to run. No kettle = no tea.  Brits have gone to war over less. A quick bit of diagnosis and some re-wiring to circumvent the switch saw the mutiny averted. Tea was back on the menu.

We saw a couple of dolphins about half a mile away but not close enough for reasonable pictures or proper identification. These were our first sighting on the whole trip which was disappointing and a little surprising. Normally one would expect far more activity. 

We arrived in Stornaway at 1545 and tied up next to the RNLI Lifeboat. A beer and a meal in the local pub on the harbour set us up for a good nights' sleep.