Saturday 15th September 2018



Aaron and myself cooked breakfast between us. Then settled in for the big wait for the engineer, Alex, and his electrician. Eventually, at 10:30 we walked across to his workshop. Apparently the electrician was working on a boat at Shardlow and would be with us when he was finished.

Aaron took Brenda into Long Eaton to buy a lower powered iron. The one we brought from the house is a 2200W model which is the maximum capacity the inverter can deliver. Brenda came back with a 1200W model which will be much kinder to the plant.

Once they returned Aaron left us for his trek back down south. While it was great to see him, his visit was all too short. As always, when visitors leave us, we were a bit flat.

Alex turned up at 1pm. The electrician was caught up on the job at Shardlow and would not manage today. However, Alex load tested the batteries and, lo and behold, all four leisure ones were knackered. One was totally gone and the other three borderline. This should not happen with new batteries just 5 months old.

While the starter battery does not require replacement, all four leisure do. Alex proposed a new frame is made up to hold the starter and five new leisure batteries are fitted using 130Ah types as opposed to the 105Ah presently fitted. This would increase our capacity from 420Ah to 650.

We have gone along with his proposal but the batteries will not be here until Wednesday. In the meantime, Alex will fabricate a new frame for the starter battery and rewire it.

So we are stuck here until Wednesday at least. Although this is frustrating, it is quite pleasant here and there are worse places to be stuck. What is annoying is that given workshop facilities and tools that I have sold or given away, I could easily effect these repairs myself.

We both dozed later in the afternoon, didn’t feel like any dinner so just had sandwiches and continued watching Game of Thrones in the evening.   






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
Thursday 22 nd November 2018 We were awake during the night and watched a lovely, bright, full moon in a clear sky with a thick ground mist. When we woke this morning the world was white after a hard frost. Apparently it got down to -4 ˚ overnight. The stove has remained light since its first lighting on 19 th October. This morning was no exception and the boat was cold but not overly so, the stove having been damped down overnight. However, we did turn the heating on for ½ hour to warm the boat up while the stove was heating up. We haven’t had the heating on for some time but the times we have, has been when the boat has become cold. We still haven’t yet mastered the regulating of the heating. If it is left on too long, the boat becomes oppressively hot and remains so for a long time.   We went for a walk to the nearest village, Stockton. The walk was along a main road to begin with and was not pleasant with all the traffic and narrow verges to walk on. We w...
Read more
Image
Sunday 14 th July 2019 We went for a walk around Avoncliffe before a slow cruise covering the 1 ½ miles back into Bradford and were, yet again, lucky enough to find a place on the 48 hour moorings. Avoncliffe is a tiny, delightful place and a very popular stop for walkers and cyclists. Around the Cross Guns pub are a few cottages, all staggered towards the river bank and dominated by the Aqueduct. However, looking at signs from the past, it had once been a thriving small-scale industrial centre with water mills and factory mills concerned with the cloth industry. The up-market Avoncliffe Villa apartments bely their past as, first the Bradford Workhouse, then a convalescence hospital for injured First World War troops and later a hotel. Right our Bradford moorings, down a small embankment, is Barton Farm. The farm buildings are all Medieval and consist of a Manor House, a Granary, one of the best examples of a Tithe Barn and several other buildings. Today, the Tithe Barn ...
Read more
Image
Monday 30 th July 2018 We ambled about in the morning. Brenda did some housework and I walked up into Winsford for some shopping. The day was not good, a lot of cloud and threatening rain. Matt brought Manny and Eva out to us at 3pm. Just as they turned up the heavens opened with heavy rain. It was great to see them both, they are here for a week, so hopefully we won’t get sick of them and make them swim home. Once Matt had gone we waited a short while for the rain to stop and then set off. We passed under the two bridges that make up the roundabout at the bottom end of Winsford which we have travelled over countless times by car. As soon as you pass under the first bridge you are off Canal and River Trust waters. We winded at the entrance to the marina being careful not to venture too far into the flash because of the danger of shifting, shallow sandbanks and then started to retrace our route. This now put us right at the start of the Weaver Navigation and by th...
Read more