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| My Dad looking like the proud father of a new baby |
Wednesday and Thursday
were a bit traumatic, boat-maintenance-wise, as the bilge pump pipe split and a
water pressure release valve gave way on the calorifier. The calorifier is where the hot water is
stored and is in the engine bay – the valve had started to drip so I knew I had
to replace it but on Wednesday morning the drip had turned into a leak and was
filling the bilge. To make matters
worse the bilge pump pipe had split so I couldn’t pump the water out with the
bilge pump. I was down in the engine bay
and let out an expletive when I realised the extent of the issues; fortunately,
Craig (our neighbour) was cycling past on his way to work and popped his head
down to see what the issue was. As he is
a plumber, amongst other trades, he said he would get me a new valve and fit it
when he came home from work.
I turned the pressure down
on the water system to return the leak to a drip and got my trusty cordless drill
with a water pump attachment and spent most of the morning in the engine bay
pumping out the bilge.
When Craig went to fit the
new valve we found out that the old one was a male fitting and the one he
bought was a female – that’s the sort of thing that only goes wrong for me usually. To cut a long story short, it wasn’t until Thursday
evening that everything was fixed.
On Thursday I received a
warning email from C&RT saying that our boat had been seen moored in the
same place for more than two weeks (the limit). I explained that after the first fortnight I
had moved to Warwick, turned round and was now facing in the opposite
direction.
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| C&RT agreed to remove the ‘warning’ from their records of the boat’s movements |
Sitting in the cratch for
a drink before dinner on Thursday evening we noticed one of the tomato plants
had started producing fruit. I know many
of you with greenhouses will have probably started harvesting your first
tomatoes but this was a nice surprise for us.
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| Our first tomato fruits this year |
On Thursday Buddy and I
had cycled into Leamington Spa (Leam as we now call it) so I could have my annual
haircut. I had found a hairdressers that
would let Buddy sit next to me while I had the operation.
As well as the tomatoes, Karen’s
parsley seeds had sprouted enough that I could use fresh parsley when I cooked
later in the evening.
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| Relaxing with a drink before dinner (sporting my annual haircut) |
On Friday I went up to
Aintree to check on the progress of the new boat, picking up my father from Northwich station on the way. The shell (steelwork) is now complete and is
ready to be trucked to the boatyard in Northwich for painting and interior fit
out. The boat has been ready for a
couple of weeks but the fork lift truck, that the boat builders use to manoeuvre
boats out of the sheds to be craned onto lorries, has broken down. Something is wrong hydraulically and the replacement part won't arrive until Tuesday at the earliest.
This means they have a backlog of finished boats and are starting to run
out of space to continue building others.
The picture at the top
shows our boat sandwiched between two other completed shells waiting for the
truck to be repaired,
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| The left hand side from the front: portholes for our bedroom and the bathroom. The saloon with a window, dinette with opening side doors and a window for the galley right at the back |
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The inside from the front
doors
|
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| The stern which has a lot less space than the current Chalkhill Blue as the new boat is 13 feet shorter |
As we have lived on the
current boat for quite a while we knew exactly how to design the new boat. For example we are having the dinette seating
raised so that we can look directly out of the side hatches (that will have windows in them) onto the water
whilst eating. At present we sit low
down so cannot see onto the water which is most frustrating. We are also having side hatches rather than
windows in the dinette so that they can be open in the summer to bring us even
closer to the water.
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| The right hand side from the rear – galley window, dinette side doors, saloon window and bathroom and bedroom ports at the other end |
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