Abingdon

Taking advantage of the fact that the constant drizzle on Monday and Tuesday had loosened the sooty marks on the roof of the boat I set to work cleaning it off with the scrubbing brush.  Dolloping clean river water on with the manky mop.

Better late than never to remove the winter soot.

What a lovely clean roof.

Brief lunch stop in Abingdon.  Shame we couldn't stay longer and take advantage of the 5 day mooring availability 

Praying to the gods of ... ?

And now we have role reversal.  Him on boat and me at home.  That is so not right.

Weybridge to Marlow

Saluting his boss

I think she is in

Nice

Priorities

We set off from Pyrford yesterday and made it to Runneymede which was a bonus as plan A only got us to Weybridge.  Today we set off at 8.30am and made it to just above Marlow by 5pm.  We had lunch at Cliveden Woods and Rob took the bike to go look for milk while I continued up thro Cookham Lock and we met up again at Marlow Lock and moored up just below Temple Lock in the undergrowth.  First use of motorbike ramp with locking pin in place.  Since this is also my rail for the curtain between the bathroom and galley we will now be al fresco.  Rob has just returned from another trip to find a paper and fish and chips.  woo hoo

Pyrford to the limit

The River Wey Navigation is lovely.

Leaving Pyrford Lock

Approaching Newark Lock and Priory

Papercourt Lock (No really!!)

the locks on the Wey don't have ground paddles so you have to rope to a yellow pin near the lockgates at the bottom of the lock so you are as far back as possible from the fierce gate paddles.

this is the limit of navigation with a horse boat waiting for the horse and the punters.

to the right of the picture a brand new Sainsburies and they were giving out reusable jute bags with designs done by the local kids.  So we now have two.

My Dad posing by the sign for me.

Blurb

When we moored back outside the Manor Inn (Beefeater) again the horse boat went past.  Each time the first we knew of it was when the horse plodded past so we didn't get the best photo opportunity!

Weybridge to Pyrford

Bit disconcerting to see that behind you.

The entrance to the Wey

Sorry getting all arty all over the place!

Mill Lock on the Wey

For my own information. This is the old set of batteries and configuration.

My updated electric diagram.

For some reason there are two cables from the Victron, only shown as one on the original diagram so I have only shown one here.

Two lonely batteries where once there were five!

Teddington to Weybridge

Not had very good signal here on the Thames.

So we stayed one night at Kingston on Thames then on up to outside Hampton Court.  Very nice.  I walked around to the otherside to take a picture and of course there is a river in the way so I had to go back to the Bridge follow road to over the river and I was told to go through a gap in the hedge but I didn't like the look of it (it looked like a Tramps Home) so I walked on and over the railway turned left into the School, round the playing fields then right when I got to the Thames again and all the way along till I was opposite the mooring.  Alan's boat was beautifully placed with the Palace in the background but I was too far down.  The picture I did get of my boat had a black dog in the background doing something unmentionable.  I think I will have to photoshop the dog out!

Hampton Court

Bananas having fun

Drunken fools at 11am in the morning?

Baxter

Then we travelled up to Shepperton and moored two nights on the 24hour moorings because of the bad weather.  We were breasted up under a tree.  Which of course dropped branches left right and centre.  Luckily the BIG branch landed next to my boat and not on top.

Today I have moved on to Weybridge and left Alan - we will meet up again next week probably as we are both headed to Godalming.  He has a gold licence but I have to get off the Thames as I only have a 7 day visitors licence.

Brentford to Teddington

New Batteries.

The Steca PR1010 is now correctly installed to reflect the new batteries which are normal lead acid not gel like the previous ones.

I now have to add checking levels to my list of chores.

On playing around with the Steca it would appear that it was incorrectly set up to begin with as it assumed there were no other forms of charge.

This explains the E03 error the Smartguage kept throwing up.  So all in all the fact that they have lasted 5 years is a miracle!!

Help I am a fool Anyone have a Steca PR1010 ?

I have completely flattened my batteries - attempting to recharge them - spending each evening in the dark with no electrics on at all so that each night I do not lose the charge I have managed to put in the day before.  I am hopeful that by the end of today / tomorrow I could be back to normal.

HOWEVER

In checking to see if my solar panels were still working I removed the fuse from the controller STECA PR1010 and replaced it.  Since then I have had an E06 error on the controller.  I have no manual.

anyone have an idea ?  I have of course pressed lots of buttons in various orders so may have inadvertently messed around with the original settings.  I have just sent an email to Steca as their downloadable manual is just one sheet with nothing useful on it all.

the other codes/settings I now have are

arrow battery arrow with 50C below it
moon arrow lightbulb - off
moon battery lightbulb PrE
sun battery lightbulb three columns of three dashes
battery 5n  (I have 6 batteries but 5 are together and one on the swim)
battery gel (I have gel batteries so I think that setting is still ok)

When you scroll through normally it is reading the battery status correctly agreeing with the smartgauge and the multimeter but it is

zero amps
sun to battery no amps
battery to lightbulb no amps
sun arrow 12.8kah
all with a non smiling face

Thanks in advance