Engine room bulkhead

Well Bryan made the engine room bulkhead using the floor space requirements for my batteries. However at four feet this does make the doorway a little tight.







I said the real criteria was the size of the dinette. Ie space for the calorifier and all its pipes. Annoyingly the calorifier has pipe outlets at the other end as well. Will need to contact the suppliers to tell us which pipes are which!

If anyone might have an idea there are two at the port/wall side. One top and one bottom both about 22mm. At the business end by the gangway there are two 22mm ones and two 15mm ones and a third 15mm one which I assume is the drainage one. And also the space for the immersion heater element.

So is it fresh cold in at the bottom port side? Or are these two the engine ones?

In which case at the other end the two 15mm are the fresh water and the two 22mm ones the Mikuni heating source?







This is where my batteries will go. There is room for them on the floor but we think we will raise them up to the height of the engine bulkhead and have the pipes running in the space underneath.

Bryan will reduce the width of the wall from 4ft to maybe 3ft 9 inches. The extra 3 inches in the door way will be a bonus. The step down will be then in the door way itself into the saloon. Original plan had a bit of a well in the engine room side.

Note to self:- Mustn't forget to paint the engine bay before we can no longer have easy access.

Some more photos

And three makes a convoy. The boats and crane arrive at Willington.

Northumberland in the water.

I name this boat ...

Be warned if you see this end of the boat it is coming towards you!

End of an era

Harvest leaves the farm after three years of painstaking work by Paul.

I did take video footage but cannot load it. So you will have to make do with the photos. The video was 11 minutes long so that may or may not be the problem.

We had to knock her off the concrete blocks and roll her forward before the crane could lift her onto the lorry.

Hence the need to thread the needle through the bow thruster.

Northumberland also left the same day and they were both dropped in at Willington Marina. Good weather but a bit blustery.

Paul told us to bring our own cups and plates. He provided a fabulous German Sausage soup. His sons were not sure of ingredients but there were lentils etc. The sausages were HUGE. He also provided kegs of german beer. Unfortunately I was driving so had to make do with half a cup.

Northumberland had a bit of a list on arriving in the water but as she only has a boatman's cabin so far plenty of opportunity to correct this.

Harvest was perfect. She weighed 19tonnes Paul estimated 18.5 so he was pretty accurate. The batteries weighed a tonne in themselves but these had been perfectly balanced by the 10 gas bottles in the bow.

Big items loaded

Today Bryan fetched the large items from my house and took them to the boat. Namely the little washing machine - very heavy, fridge freezer - bigger but not so heavy and the compost loo - very light indeed. Luckily I had made a while ago a board with wheels for moving the heavy chest freezer in and out of the cupboard under the stairs. I had appropriated this when the washing machine had been delivered so I could move it from the front door into the dining room. This meant we only had to man/woman handle the washing machine out the front door and into the Van. Apparently getting it on board was 'interesting' but I wasn't there so can't comment.



Small boy caught the wrong train and so I picked him up on the way down to the boat. As you can see he only just fits on the boat height wise! But he will always be 'small boy' to me.





The galley units in place. The Corian man will be coming next week to give us a price for two straight runs here plus the little one in the bathroom.


And here are the two 'white goods' in situ. Isn't the washing machine cute?

Now that they are on board we can put in the last bulkhead and do the engine room. We are going on a works outing tomorrow to visit Belle at Fradley Junction and will dissect their engine room so that Bryan can replicate. And then repair to the Swan for a swift half.

I have found a man who will fit the Mikuni and he also does gas so that is two things sorted. He advised on exchanging the MX60 for the 40 as that would fit into the front locker better. Mikuni have said yes so I will be posting the MX60 back tomorrow.

And my P35's are all done just not sent online yet.

It was a productive day to day.

First bathroom wall panel

Where the flash is on the panel is where the shower rail will eventually be. This board is going around the bath as the shower panels. I will be finding someone to make glass folding shower panels for the other two sides of the bath so that it will effectivly be a proper shower cubicle with a VERY deep bottom.

diy kitchen units arrived

Typically having told me yesterday that I would be the last drop off and to expect them in the afternoon they would ring me one hour before. I thought that is brilliant as I have a dentist appointment in the morning. So what happens?

Both the mobile and then the land line ring this morning whilst I am in the bath! Change of plan going to be first drop! Be there in an hour. Oh frabjous joy. On the way to the dentist I called in to make sure Steve was aware (Bryan not there today or tomorrow) and narrowly missed meeting the van head on as it was leaving! Called back after the dentist and small boy helped me on with most of the units. Had a problem with the 600mm unit as it just fitted through the door but I had to put it down as I was in danger of falling off the back of the boat and small boy caught his hand between the bottom of the unit and the lip of the door. He was very good and didn't swear in front of his mother but having extricated his mangled hand ran down the other end of the boat to do so. So refined you know.

We left the two 700mm units for Bryan to do on his way back from whereever he was as they would involve lifting through the top of the hatch. Of course they are actually probably lighter than the 600 unit as that has three pan drawers in!!

so here they are still encased in cardboard. Mainly because injured small boy had lost interest in anything to do with Mother's boat but also for protection.






this one is the 400mm waste bin unit. It will be going beside the steps out for easy rubbish removal. Well easy if the tow path is actually on that side! This means that I will have to reverse into my pontoon mooring at Shireoaks if I want to use the side entrance.

Celebrations

Today is mine and my son's joint non birthday. I thought I would be more subtle and arrive late. He was more subtle and arrived even later. Lucky as I really didn't want to share my birthday but am quite happy to share our non birthday.

As I kept telling him as a small boy

"It's good to share"

Sometimes it just isn't...