What a lovely day

Wish I had been able to boat in it.

Never mind.

One wet leprechaun ...

So near and yet so far ...

All the boats

That passed me yesterday heading into Rugeley and now coming back again.

Colwich Lock is closed until around 25th February which is why I am languishing at my mooring rather than setting off on my 2011 Odyssey. 

This year Llangollen is my main destination.

Finally got around to ...

drilling the hole for the tiller arm to slot into.

Just one of the many things I am doing on the boat to personalise it and make sure everything finally has it's own proper place.  Up to now things have just been shoved all over but slowly I am sorting it out.

This morning (while running the engine to recharge the batteries which had gone down to 60% after 5 nights on board) I took the plastic protective coating off the kitchen units!

Benefit of running the engine I will no longer have to heat water for washing in a saucepan.  Woo Hoo.

It is possible

to have a strip wash, wash your hair and still have enough water left over from a large saucepan full of hot water to wash the breakfast dishes.

Who really needs the luxury of a bath/shower...

( I would quickly point out that the same water was not used for all three activities. )

To brighten my engine room

During the snow when I was stuck indoors I found out about making rag rugs on t'internet.  They are called toothbrush rugs.  We found a suitable old toothbrush cut the head off, filed it to a sort of point and using the hole in the end I made this rug.  We didn't have any rags but we did have plenty of plastic shopping bags so I made this out of strips of plastic bags.  It kept me out of trouble and out of the looney bin.

I will make a proper rag one for the boat but as I will have to buy the rags it can wait until next winter.

Currently I am residing in my country floating cottage.

I am pleased to report

that we have turned the water system on and despite there still being no shower/bath dirverter on the bath taps no water is escaping there nor indeed from the water pump nor any joints.  A relief it looks like I have survived the cold winter weather with the minimum of damage to my boat.

I have had the Mikuni serviced and repressurised and discovered the reason for it's lacklustre behaviour in the past.  Some of the connections in the front locker were leaking quite badly.  These connections have been replaced and it worked well so my worries of diesel bug being the cause are unfounded.  I will however put Marine 16 in when it next gets filled up anyway.  (Both tanks)

I am now just waiting for some replacement connections from the engine into the calorifier (and ideally the bath/shower diverter) and then I am good to go.

I also had the problem with the Smartgauge E03 error looked at.  The batteries are fine and not being subjected to spikes at 15v as the error message indicates.  The Smartgauge itself is set too sensitive and is going off at around 14.65 14.75 etc.  Which is annoying but not apparently insuperable.

All in all I enjoyed myself yesterday and did not mind at all the mopping up of antifreeze (approx 2 gallons of) using an extremely small sponge.  It had to be small to fit through the wooden platform that kept everything up and out of the spillage.  I can't complain as the platform had done  a sterling job.