Thursday 12 April 2018

It's a good day for...

...staying put and keeping warm. The forecast was quite correct, the easterly wind and chilly temperatures have indeed continued into today, making our decision to spend a second night here seem very wise.

We've not been idle, however. The long shoreline has been carefully coiled up, secured with two Velcro ties and stored away under the bed. The isolation transformer has likewise been person-handled out of the well deck, down the towpath, through the engine room and placed under the bed. The only downside of the excellent Airlink unit is its weight, inevitable with so much copper coil inside. If we were having this boat built now, we'd have it built in, but there's just not enough room in the engine hole to retrofit it without major rearranging, so we live with the twice-per-year exercise in manual handling.

It's definitely a two person lift if you're taking it any distance.

I also connected the new gas cylinder and checked it for gas tightness. Whilst in the gas locker, I used the bubble tester to check that all was well with the low pressure side – it's good practice just to give the bubble tester button a push each time you change cylinders.

Sheila has been doing IT and banking stuff when not helping me. After coffee, we walked through to the village again for more bread and some more greengroceries. For a change we got a multiseed loaf from Bird's rather than a Co-op instore baked one.

We've had a pottering sort of afternoon, running the engine to get the batteries back up to full charge and similar. An occasional boat has plodded past one way or the other, the steerers muffled to the eyes in the chilling wind.

Tomorrow should be a little better and then things are scheduled to improve quite a bit over the weekend and into next week. The river levels are coming down nicely, so it will be on to Alrewas for us.



2 comments:

Adam said...

I have missed your posts -- now you're back it really feels as though spring is here!

Sally Ellis said...

Glad your back!
Look forward to your adventures.