There's good and there's bad news

Good news and bad news…

As always, Mike Carter made our BSS exam as painless as possible, passing Sanity Again without difficulty and handing out just a couple of bits of advice, one regarding improving the cover over the batteries and the other about keeping an eye on the Squirrel flue where it passes through the ceiling boards.

There’s a brass looking ring covering the junction, which should be dropped down just occasionally to make sure that no overheating is happening behind it.

We also had a good chat about this and that. We all have a very positive impression of Richard Parry, the CRT CEO, for example. Mike also recommended the use of Owatrol in restoring paintwork. Sanity Again is still looking very good, of course, but there are areas like the bow flashes that are both getting just a bit faded and have needed touching in here and there. Owatrol will rejuvenate these, apparently, even helping to blend the newer touch-in paint into the existing stuff.

We celebrated our further four years of legit boating by having lunch in the Willow Tree; unfortunately they’d had a bit of a run today and were sold out of both jacket potatoes and quiche, so we had to settle for pasty and chips.

Less good is that the (until now) completely reliable Hurricane central heating boiler has gone on strike. So this afternoon’s job was to do a service on it to see if that helped and of course to check that the fuel and power supplies were all ok, which they were.

I had a conversation with Peter Mason at Braidbar and at his suggestion called Chris at Calcutt, the importer. Chris was very helpful and suggested a couple of things to try. I’ll do those tomorrow and let you know how I get on.

In the meantime, we will rely on the immersion heater for hot water and start showering in the afternoon, when the back end of the boat has warmed up with heat flowing through from the Squirrel, rather than taking the usual first thing shower.

Tonight we’re off to a meeting about volunteer work in the marina and tomorrow actually have nothing planned – apart from me cajoling the Hurricane, that is.