Blokey Stuff

OK Penny get off the bloody computer, David's turn.

Well readers I am sure you're fed up with the 'we are here or there stuff'' so I thought I could spice things up a bit with some serious news, stuff blokes want to read for instance.

A few people have asked 'what do you do all day, how do you fill your time up'. Easy answer is lots of laziness & time wasting but that's not the whole, complete answer. All is variable so I can describe a typical day only in abstract form.

I get up early, make a pot of tea & sit around taking in the a.m. until it has fully brewed. I take Penny a cup, she gets up later. Usually by this time, following the usual round of ablutions, I am clattering around in the engine room having words with our ancient ford (Henry) T2 about forthcoming events. We do the breakfast thing then I start up the motor & bugger around with mooring lines, power cables & lumps of firewood which litter the decks & wait for Herself to surface. Eventually we're off. Now, canals are not often that wide & our steering gear is not that young so we wander around the canal or river for a bit, a few hours maybe, until we find a groovey looking spot & we stop. Reversal of the buggering around with ropes & stuff for bit, may involve a ditch, stinging nettles, dog poo (very unlucky), may not. Down in the engine room to have another word with the grease gun, prop shaft etc. Then, hey ho, lunch time.

This often involves cycling off to find a patisserie, usually shut, & slicing up some of yesterday's bread with an axe. On some waterways there is likely to be an enforced coffee break as the locks shut 'for lunch' at about midday for an hour or so, I cannot for the life of me get my head around this one. These guys (occassional gals) have a great job in usually great places. Only in August are the ways busy (a relative term meaning the eclusiere has to wind two locks an hour)

Later I often go for a forage, firewood, walnuts, apples, mushrooms, whatever, Penny goes off sight seeing to the local Chateau, shoe shop etc. (all closed) There is also life to deal with, washing clothes in canal water, painting rusting decks, pulling dead ducks out of the propellor, you name it, we do it all just as you at home do only we do it the inefficient, fun way.

We have no TV, read a lot, watch the odd DVD, eat out or in, get a takeaway, all in a typical day.

And now another, further word about Henry the ford. When we bought the boat, the engine worked fine which is more than I can say about some boats we looked at (remember ZZ11) another story. Unfortunately the boat had been more or less static for the last 12 years or so, engine not used much. There was no working alternator, there were rusty pipes, blocked heat exchangers (two) and valves which didn't. I happened to have in stock, so to speak, an old alternator from a Subaru, courtesy Bad Bob, courtesy Robert. This I took to a nice man in Tiptree who cleaned & tested it (working well) & gave me a little black box (voltage regulator) to match.

Ta much. Stuck it on, sort off, & off we went, no volts. Did we ever mess around with that thing. Something, we were assured, to do with a 'excitor'. Whatever does it for you, we used a 6amp bulb.

No go. Finally I changed the battery in the testing guage & guess what. Power to the people, 12v to us in fact.

Next the dreadful oil consumption, not evident upon inspection.

During our trial cruising in N.Holland in 2009, we used the motor quite gently. Less speed good & better for fuel consumption I thought & possibly true. What actually happened was that the engine (120hp) never got worked, never came up to speed whatever. The thing got gummed up. What it needed was a bloody good thrashing. This finally happened on the Seine, powering upstream, the thing coughed & farted a few times & away we went, fuel consumption better (results to be confirmed) oil consumption negligible. We can now make about 7 Kts. Next we need a bigger propellor, that's another budget 'period' apparently, (sounds a lot like NO to me).