Back at Braidbar again

5th & 6th November

The bumps and bangs of fireworks went on for some time after we went to bed, but didn’t stop us getting a night’s sleep. In the morning we chugged along the familiar route to Higher Poynton and Lord Vernon’s Wharf.

On arrival, we were able to get a mooring on the Deeps with no problem – apparently BW have been cracking down on the overstayers a bit: the winter moorers are beginning to collect near the bridge.

On enquiring at the yard, we were told the Iain and Luisa have just gone off on a fortnight’s holiday to Spain, so we had a natter with Maria, Peter who has recently joined the team, and with Peter and Gill, the prospective owners of number 106, Cala, which is in build at the moment. 105, Nocturne, looks nearly ready, and splendid in her new paint.

We can easily wait to see Iain when we come back about most stuff, but when she heard about our travails with the TravelPower and Victron, Maria asked Ian Grindrod to take a look.

He very kindly spent a couple of hours wrestling with the alternator, having discovered that it had shed two of the bolts which hold the two halves of the body together. Replacing them didn’t solve the main problem, unfortunately, so we need to put the Victron on a shore line supply to determine where the fault is.

During the afternoon I did an oil change whilst the engine bay was all opened up. The weather had become a bit off and on, rain wise, so we settled into the boat for the rest of the day. Sheila watched South Pacific on her DVD player, whilst I went back to Blakes 7 on the laptop, wearing my new headphones to avoid hearing Avon apparently performing “This nearly was mine”.

We made a late start this morning, with the intention of filling with water and diesel and then wandering off up the canal a bit. As we were watering, Ian G came by again, and suggested that, as the Trading Post won’t be open tomorrow, we can moor on the shop mooring tonight. He could then run a long shore line to us in the cause of advancing the diagnostic process re the power supply.

What helpful people they all are. We duly filled with diesel, and replaced a gas cylinder that ran out last night in the middle of cooking dinner. (It’s usually on a wet night, in the middle of cooking dinner.) Then we decided to go up to Marple and back for the sake of the run, and because Sheila wanted to visit the wool shop there.

This we did, getting there just before one. We had a successful shopping trip – the right needles were in stock, as well as some Aran wool Sheila’s been looking for to do a repair job on a crocheted blanket for Jane Howarth. A trip to the big Co-op here restocked the food cupboard, then Sheila gave a virtuoso performance of winding in the junction between the Macc and the Peak Forest, under the gongoozling eyes of some walkers who were passing at the time. It is nice when it works out like that – I usually panic and screw up in such situations.

We tootled back to HP, Sheila trying not to succumb to the cold as the afternoon darkened and the wind came up. Arriving back just as the Trading Post shut, She did another superb wind at the far end of the Deeps, and we came back onto the shop mooring we’d left six hours before.

Connecting the shore line demonstrated that the Victron inverter charger is behaving perfectly normally when fed with AC mains – so it must be the TravelPower that’s the problem.

Serious soup tonight – I want to run the freezer stocks down a bit, so I chopped up some beef burgers I had bought in against summer barbeques, and used them and a couple of cans of tomatoes as the base for a beef and veg soup, with added dinosaur from last time of course.

Martin asked in a comment to my remark about homeopathic levels of turkey what effect I thought it would have. Nice one, Martin – it seems to have had as much effect as any other homeo treatment does for me...