New batteries, and a relaxed day

19th & 20th February

As we didn't have to be back at Anglo Welsh until eleven yesterday, we made an extremely lazy start. Even so, we found ourselves hanging about, and the challenge was to put the time to good use.

Sheila improved the shining hour by sorting the cuffs of my boating fleece. This is the slightly scruffy one I use for boating and other potentially mucky situations, It's very old, in fact it came from a farmers' store in Llangefni on Anglesey, and over the years the cuff elastics had become completely slack. Sheila was able to open up the cuff hems and insert fresh elastic: it's amazing how much more comfortable it makes it.

I spent most of the time surfing the net and catching up with email replies.

At around half ten we started getting Sanity ready to cruise, and by quarter to eleven were on our way. Another sweeping turn off the towpath sent us heading back towards Swivel Bridge and the short run to the junction. We had to pause a while for Tobermory, one of the boats on the permanent moorings by the aqueducts, to reverse into the junction, and turn and go onto the service point just where we wanted to be, but as there was no demand for water at the time, I put Sanity on the moorings just in front of her.

The new batteries had already arrived, in a very snazzy bright yellow cases, so I set to and started getting the old ones out. It's just a fiddle to undo all the connections and get the cabling out of the way whilst heaving the heavy lumps onto the stern deck. At least the Braidbar design of the engine hole makes the domestic batteries easy to get at, unlike some others I've seen.

AW charged £70 a piece for the new ones, which is at the low end of what they seem to cost these days, and I reasonably soon had them installed and checked out. Sheila meanwhile had gone into the village to get supplies, and came back whilst all this was going on.

Engine restarted, we came back to our mooring on Tixall which was still free. I kept the engine running for a while: new batteries are seldom fully charged, as lead acid cells self discharge in storage, and these were no exception, but it was soon apparent that they were making a big difference to performance. We had a decent voltage this morning for the first time for quite a while, so that's one less hassle to worry about.

I also took the opportunity to get a couple of bags of coal, more of the Newflame I got here last time. It's not brilliant stuff, to be honest, a bit slow to catch, prone to go out if allowed to burn down too far, and full of ash (brick dust by the looks of it) but beggars can't be choosers. At this time of year, I tend only to buy a couple of bags at a time, so as to avoid having too many left when we finally stop using the Squirrel in the Spring.

We had planned to move off today, but we had a call from Elanor to say that our replacement credit cards had arrived, and she doesn't want to post them on. Neither Acton Trussell nor Penkridge is desperately convenient for her to reach from her place of work in Rugeley, so we've put in yet another day here at Tixall.

It's been very relaxed: the internet connection has finally speeded up and the March edition of Waterways World had arrived when we went into the village. I'm actually mentioned in the editorial, with reference to our diesel split spreadsheet, so that may mean yet more hits on the website.

Sheila's taken advantage of the connection to do some family finance stuff, whilst I refixed the new bow fender (it had twisted round to one side yet again) and took the switch out of the connecting lead for the self pump out pump.

I've commented before about the need to reduce voltage drop as far as possible in the supply to the pump, and using heavy cable has made a difference, but we decided that the convenience of having a waterproof switch in the line did not justify the voltage drop it presented, so it's been removed.

The toilet tank gauge has just gone to amber, so we'll probably do a pump out at the Penkridge service block when we're there on Monday.

Meantime, we'll see Elanor for dinner tonight, then hi ho for the open cut tomorrow.