at moments like this i have it on standby ready to go because here we are
it's
it's just it's surprisingly good
now just manoeuvre this out of the harbor we'll see how we get on
easier if i took off my greeting glasses wouldn't i i'll be able to see where i'm
going so we're just leaving drummond harbor we've been there for the past two days and two nights
and um that kind of really brings me to another point is one of the biggest problems that
people have on boats is batteries, and batteries keeping a charge. Were testing Victron
have uh true euromotive and carrying challenge raptors decline to switch a new type of battery
the other way you normally have your wet lead acid batteries and then the other end of the spectrum
you have lithium batteries but what we're using is something that's a little middle ground they're
called victron super cycle agm batteries i think atm stands for absorbed glass mat and uh we fitted
them there about three days ago but they're not brand new now they're not brand new these have
been uh tested by victron they've they spent a few months just dropping the charge out of them
as much as they can building it up again and putting them through the mill so they've given
them to us now with instructions to do likewise put them through the mill and see how well they
fare out we're going to do a full video on that at a later stage but um they're a mid-range kind of
battery in that they're not as good as lithium or bloody hell they're not as expensive either
you might be able to save in the wash behind me there if i step to one side
and kind of giving it a bit of throttle at the moment and um
what we do with the the engines on on driftwood are there to 125 horsepower engines
so normally we're putting along and diesel engines don't like to be uh driven gently cheers guys
with some amount of teeth can i move that around there make sure you can see him
the um so every once in a while the start get quite smoky and the cure to that is just to
give them a bit of trouble make them work hard and you can't really do that in too many places
but you can do it out here in the lake because it doesn't really make the boat go a whole lot faster
it just makes a bigger wash burns more diesel but it is actually good for the engines every once in
a while to do that and uh so that's what i'm doing now because otherwise they don't do it every now
and then we end up with quite smoky engines well it's nice to do it look at this beautiful day
the restrictions were lifted a couple days ago that we couldn't go outside your own county now
so the water is very the river is very very quiet but they're saying from friday all the hour boats
will be out so we're going to really enjoy the peace and tranquility now but it's like you miss
not having that we have never found ourselves it's now the middle of may we've been in drummond
harbor for two days one of the boats came in and out and would you believe we were actually
we were snoozing we'd sat down with the afternoon we've been there a long walk we were reading our
books and you know the way you get down and you just get lazy we conked out and as we woke up
as we woke up there's about leaving the harbour on uh so the only visitor we
got in two days we missed which i look the um well hopefully next i mean that that's that's
incredible to have a harbor like that to ourselves in the middle of may like it's
you know so hopefully this weekend will be a little bit like somebody turning a switch and the
river will come to life again meanwhile tesla's not great for the weekend but then again yeah
it's not great but look it's the first opportunity people would have had to go boating so fingers
crossed the um so where we're heading to now we're heading to a little bay up here and there's
a mooring boy in that bay i'm going to try up to that and we might have a little bit of lunch there
we chill out tell you more about that in a second so between luck bulldog and luck buffon there's
a little narrow cut and on the right hand side there's a small little bay and in that bay there's
a repetition that's just a coast guard given the forecast and then in the there's uh a waterway at
an inland waterway association of ireland and iwa marine boy and uh we're going to try on to
that and they're they're fun to tie onto every once in a while and um originally the first time
i tied onto a mooring boy i did it completely wrong i'll tell you more about that later but
hopefully we'll do it the correct way this time now we're we've learned how to do it right
you're dead with you the last time you've done this you're me now so i've never better crew
but uh so we're heading up river and we're hoping to meet a lot of river to give us a price to get a
canopy on the boat and this is something i've been fighting against since we bought the boat we have
about 14 years now and um i've always been against putting the canopy on the truck because i just
i just love being out in the the air i love the the visibility i have i love the fact that even
if it's raining i can still see i don't need wipers and all the rest and so i have been
very much against it but marion has talked me around as as most husbands do get manipulated or
convinced and uh so we'll see we get um if the price is right we might try and go for
a new canopy and also if the if the time scale is right if it'll fit in with our plans because
obviously i have not said this at all except except that we're doing it because you wanted
that's all and then so our long-term plans then for the summer is no plan well
no plan because i mean i know you're right that voting plans always chop and they always change
and it's best to have no plan but we have kind of penciled in that we'd like to get into limerick
and we'd like to go around the estuary and uh if we got weather like this on the estuary it'd
be absolutely lovely depends on the weather and it will depend on on earth crusher and there's
loads and loads and loads of ifs i've noticed that would be a big thing for me yeah yeah we'll
look we'll see how it goes it'd be nice to get into limerick we haven't been into limerick in
a long time yeah it's about 10 years since we're in there yeah and marion is a limerick girl so
if we bring her home once more once you don't need me there you go leave it there
a wooden dream but i'd starve so we're just approaching the cut now we're heading north
and uh on the right hand side with two green markers and what we're going to do is we're
going to pass the first those first two green markers and then we're going to turn right
and take it nice and gently and head in towards this marker boy and the plan would be to pass the
microbiota down along on this side here because that's where i can see it easiest bring it down
here where marion should be able to take a rope from the bow bring it down pass it through it
bring that rope back to the bow tie it off and we should be secured to see how well that works out
not that i'll be no problem it'll be a smooth military operation there'll be no hiccups at all
i hope we'll see now so they say the plan is to approach the boy here now marion has the
front mooring rope brought down along the side of the boat and she has a boat hook up there ready
and going to try and pass just to the port side just to the left side of that mooring boy
and then i'll try and bring the boat to a complete stop when the boy is right here beside where i i
can see it and hopefully mario and david to get a hold of the ring on the top of the mooring boy
and pass them over and roll through it i think this is made an awful lot easier by the fact
that there's uh the ring for this moon boy is on a bar about about a meter high maybe a little
less but which is really great i also have the belt thruster ready on um on this boat there's
a cut-off switch that i always turn off at the boat thruster but at moments like this i have it
on standby ready to go because it could be useful so here we are come and look very close
can i bring in closer
that's it okay right i'll pull it up you pass the rope through
and that's it right you bring that back up now to hang on hang over the camera
no no bad language so you bring that rope back and we tie it onto the far
side okay i know it's a bit difficult with the with the bicycles there
so just keep pulling on that and um
we've bicycles and stuff here on the under the bow which is making life a little bit awkward right no
now we need to no we need to bring that on the outside of the railings and back
in through the the fairlead okay so you can go up onto the bow and we'll chuck that up there
and that's it super stuff and bring it back into the the fairly there at the bottom
that's certainly but we can start with the anchor
once we're tied on love you know if it gets caught up in the anchor just put um
that's it lovely stuff
so you might be able to make out on the mooring boy it just says i-w-a-i-c-o-s that's in the water
association of ireland uh carrick and shannon so it's carrick and shannon branch of the
inland waters association of ireland and um i'm just putting one rope onto that i wouldn't i don't
think if i was staying overnight i'd run a second rope just to make it a bit more secure because
yeah when you think well if you're in a harbor you'd never just tie up with
one rope you'd always put a second one on the boat right next job is to bring back the drone
well i'm proud of myself yes yes it was a good a good bit of teamwork i worked well and uh
no there was no bad language involved and it did go pretty smoothly the um the first time i ever
went on a mooring boy was in glendale bay the spot called union hall in cork um was myself my father
and we did it completely wrong i put my dad on the bell with the boat and headed directly towards the
the marine boy uh with the idea being that he'd lean over the bowmen and hook up but of course
the bow swoops up on it and most of if not on all boats uh as we approached it of course the mooring
boy went out of sight so i relied on my father to say go left go right go forward go back i think we
spent about half an hour before we actually hooked up the boy and it was only afterwards then we
learned that the correct way to do it is actually pulled up alongside the left or right or starboard
or part side and whichever one your steering position is on so you've got the best view of
where the the body is and you pick it up the side then hook it up on the front but you'll look good
that was it was 2008 yes yeah and that was we were on our way to france 13 years ago yeah
and it would have been this time it would have been actually this month would have been may yes
yes we left limerick it was lovely for harry to spend that time with his dad your dad yeah it was
my dad was 73 at the time and it was it was great to spend quality years he's not with us anymore
so it's nice that that i have that memory of him and if you want to read about the adventure it's
in this book driftwood from the challenge of the man that's available from our website driftwood.tv
forward slash shop and i'll put a link in the description below it's not a how-to no it's not
no but uh it's a good read so guys here we are in one of the most beautiful tranquil spots um
at the moment everywhere the river shannon is tranquil because there are so few boats out and
about due to the lockdowns and um hopefully by the weekend the river will be busy again but this is a
beautiful little bay there's a small little jetty behind us for uh for our fishing boats our small
boats and kayaks and whatever we're very very sheltered it's a lovely forest walk if we got
a shore if we had a drink you know we probably would go a shower but at the moment we don't
have a dinghy but that is a lovely spot to go for a nice walk around there we're sheltered here and
the sun as you can see it's a cloudy day today it's not the best of winter but look it's it's
better than being in work and the solar panels are working very well as well aren't they they
are i think today was that the most i've ever seen them put into the batteries or about i think 19.5
amps going into the battery considering you have a battery charger at home for that they plug in to
charge batteries and that puts in 10 amps right so solar panels are effectively our generator
the silent generator because i don't know about you but i don't ever want to be that
guy in a harbor who starts up a generator because he wants to watch tv 3 or something
when you can do it perfectly significantly with proper soldiers okay so guys i think that's
that's that's the end of another vlog thanks very much for watching i hope you you enjoyed it and
uh please put in a comment subscribe or take the bell it's all it all helps yes you
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cheerio
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