One last fine day?

Having commented last time on how well the Hurricane was burning, it decided to cut out briefly yesterday evening. It restarted itself at once, but left me concerned that there might be a problem brewing. Fortunately, today has been much better than was originally forecast, with lots of bright sun and no precipitation, although that wretched cool nor' easterly wind has come back, drat it. It's much more pleasant working in the engine room if you can have the stern doors open.

We had a split walk round the marina after breakfast and a natter with various characters we met on the way. Back at the boat, I opened up the back end and removed the engine boards again. My main concern, naturally, was that we had the start of the dreaded diesel bug brewing up, but draining a bit of fuel out of the bottom of the coarse filter/agglomerator produced bright clean pinky red fuel with no sign of water or bug. Similarly, opening the bleed screw on the fine filter in the boiler supply line produced the same.

I serviced the boiler anyway. The jet was a bit mucky around the tip but otherwise all seemed ok. It fired up just fine after I'd put it all back together. If there is anything going wrong, it's beyond my skill to sort it, but hopefully it was just a passing hiccough.

After a late coffee and some reading of the paper, we had lunch. It's been fine enough to sit out on the bow as long as we had the windward side of the cratch down. Elanor and Sally came round in the early afternoon and have just gone. We've had a very pleasant time of it.

First off, I went with them to the copse. Sally's main concern was hunting for rabbits in the bramble patches, though she was persuaded to go in for a bit of a swim after a stick. Not that she brought the stick back, of course. Her attitude is "If you wanted the stick, what did you chuck it away for? What do you think I am, a spaniel?" She also had some socialisation training with Diesel, a GSD x Rottweiler who came bounding up.

Sheila met up with us at the front and we ate an ice cream apiece before going back to the boat for a mug of tea and a decent natter.

Spag Bol tonight, methinks, and not too much to do tomorrow bar the laundry.