23rd & 24th February
The cunning plan yesterday was to make a prompt start so as to get both shopping and a pump out done before boating on. This worked reasonably well, except that the bakers didn't have any bread ready by the time we were there, just after they opened at nine.
It's all baked on the premises, but clearly they don't start in the middle of the night in the way small bakers used to do.
By half nine we were on the service point doing our first self pump out for quite a time. You could tell that we'd had a number of commercial pump outs by the amount of sludge we rinsed out of the bottom of the tank. Fortunately, my mods to the power supply to the pump had made a distinct difference, with a lot more suck going on, but it still took quite a while to get even two good rinses through the tank.
We'll do another one at Nantwich, probably, so that we begin to make an impression on the state of the tank. If you don't keep clearing the sludge out, it eventually begins to set on the bottom, so that you permanently lose capacity. It is just so hard to persuade boatyards that it makes a difference using the proper rinse out line, rather than just pouring water down the pump out connection and sucking it back out again.
By half ten we were away once more, and worked up Filance, Otherton, Rodbaston and Boggs Locks, tying just before lunch between Boggs and Brick Kiln. There was much less traffic about this week, as expected, and there continues to be a Spring like feel to the air, so we are really getting the benefit of our lifestyle at the moment.
After lunch we walked back to Boggs Lock and found the Life in the Slow Lane geocache. Back at the boat, I improved the shining hour by taking advantage of an unexpectedly fast internet connection to do another post on the Building Sanity Again blog, on heating systems. It's already attracted some interesting comments about the merits of the various options, which is very gratifying.
Today we had only a short bit of boating to do, as we'd decided to stop just beyond Gailey, just before Hatherton Junction, in fact, at Long Moll's Bridge. This was because we'd spotted a whole set of caches, mostly on the towpath, around here, using the excellent waymarked Long Moll's Walk.
I worked Sanity up the remaining two locks, and we stopped to top up the water tank and post a letter before ambling on to our mooring. I also took a photo of the Round House at Gailey, as we'd dropped off a Travel Bug called Otto's Lighthouse in the last cache, and its owner had asked for photos of other towers to be added to its web page.
We still got tied up well before lunch, so ran a washload of socks to take advantage of the fact that the engine needed to be left running to finish charging the batteries.
After lunch we duly walked just under five miles, finding all seven caches, about which we felt very pleased with ourselves, especially as the last three were tiny micro caches of the kind which previously have given us much more trouble.
It was interesting to note that several other boaters had been there before us, and we particularly admired No Problem Sue's fancy laminated cards which she leaves in caches she finds.
The rest of the afternoon has passed quite quietly, as might be expected. Tomorrow, we do some serious boating, to Autherley Junction and on to the first set of SUCS moorings on the Shroppie. It'll be good to be back on that canal, one of our favourites -– it must be a year since we were last there.
4 comments:
Great post again, very informative, particularly the washing machine. I Know you need to run the engine in order to run the washing machine but do you also need to run a water hose into it as i have read on other blogs they need to do this. Is there any way to avoid this.
have a great day boating :)
Ours is plumbed into the hot and cold circuits of the domestic water system, just as you'd do at home. It uses around 60 litres of water per wash, so about 10% of our tank capacity.
We tend to start washloads on the water point when convenient, so that at least the initial fill is replaced, and it's handy to be able to keep the engine running at the revs it needs to to power the water heating bit of the wash cycle. I'll talk more about this when I do the post about power supplies on the BSA blog (next time, probably).
all the best
Bruce
Re pumpouts. What is a propper rinse out? and how do you do it? We've lived on Mr David for 10 years and only ever put water down the pump out outlet. Have we been doing it all wrong?
Hi
Not all boats with pump out have them, but many have a separate rinse out deck fitting, leading to a point at the forward end of the tank, that is uphill from the emptying pipe. This means that the rinse out water washes the sludge down the tank to where it's being sucked out.
If you have a dump through loo, you can get the same effect by running rinse water though the open shutter at the bottom of the bowl. Otherwise, it's a goood idea to flush the loo a good few times to get the same result, with a lot of rocking of the boat.
If there's an access trap on top of the tank, it might be worth very occasionally opening that up and running water through it - sometimes the place where a tank gauge is fitted can be used in this way.
It's all about moving as much of the solids out as you can.
Hope this helps! Do feel free to come back with more questions about your particular set up,if you want.
All the best
Bruce
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