Wednesday 12^th December 2018

Brenda has mouth ulcers again, is feeling pretty uncomfortable and miserable. She was awake all night.

I took the dog for a long walk through Snarestone village. It is a very small place. A pub, small school and the housing all runs along the main street. And apart from a war memorial and a telephone box, that has been decorated for Christmas, there is not a lot else here. Quite a few of the houses are very big and grand.

Brenda managed the washing through the day. It was a bedding wash that was done and it can be a problem to get dry. It was hanging out all day and, luckily, it was largely dry when it was brought in. It is then spread around the boat to finish drying overnight with the stove.

I spent the morning in the engine room, checking over the engine but mainly involved with the batteries, the charge had gone down to 61% overnight. Checked the tightness of all the terminals, checked tightness of all fuses and wiring from alternator, nothing found untoward. Checked some of the battery cells with the hydrometer and again, as last time, getting readings showing the batteries are failing, which is a worry but I cannot see this is possible.

After all this the engine was run at 1400-1500 rpm and, within two minutes, the charge was up to 100%. It would not be possible to charge from60% to 100% in 2minutes. I feel it has to be something to do with the battery monitoring, also I feel the hydrometer, for some reason, reads low. It is very difficult getting the hydrometer upright above the batteries as there is not quite enough headroom.

The shackles were fitted to the port side gangplank holders and, with the red ratchet straps, it looks really good. These straps were bought as a pack of two pack from Lidl’s ages ago, shame I didn’t get another as we need two for the other side.

Started to repaint the short boat pole that was started back in the summer. We had started with a spiral design but it was very difficult to measure out so we changed for the striped design and have decided to stick with that.

We went up to the pub in the afternoon. To use their toilets and not ours was the excuse. While in the pub we got talking to a local couple who told us of employment in the area. The main employ was the coal mines, a brickworks and farming. There were numerous pits but each only employed about 500 men, now all closed of course. The brickworks remain but is much smaller, owned by an American company, it now only produces bricks whereas it used to produce the majority of Britain’s chimney pots.