All sorted or almost.

 

Yesterday at 3.30pm Simon the Victron engineer arrived from a previous customer, to help us sort out our problem and he and Keith got down in the bottom of the boat to disconnect all the batteries, so they could get on with resolving our problem, which no doubt Keith will describe better than I ever will on Hadar’s Blog at some point. As for me well I decided the best policy was to stay out of the way. I did offer Simon a drink and something to eat, but he had already had both in a late lunch. With the afternoon disappearing into early evening and the light fading, Simon resulted to wearing a head torch, which Keith had a battery operated lamp on in the back cabin, I was left to scramble around in the dark, it is amazing how quickly your eyes adjust to the dark though. Paddy and Marmite were a little bemused to all the going's on, especially when I took Paddy for his evening walk, which is usually Keith’s job. Simon worked with such organisation and by 6.30pm we had the lights back on and were firing up the generator to charge the batteries.
With all the excitement of the day, both Keith and I were in bed by 9.30pm, but we then awake at 2.30am, which neither of us could understand why, so because we could not sleep I got up and made us a cup of tea. We sat in bed listening to the rain beating down on the roof of the back cabin, before slipping beneath the duvet to see if we could get some more sleep. I dozed on and off until 7am and then gave up trying to actually get any proper sleep. The TV went on and I made us some door step toast with butter and marmalade, this was a wonderful way to start the day especially as it was snowing heavily outside and had begun to settle. Having watched the news and the snow storms they were having in America and Canada, I feel we get off lightly. 8.30am Paddy and I stepped off the boat for his morning walk, he did not look at all amused having to walk through the slush the rain and snow was leaving behind, but needs must he did what he had to do and then did an about turn to head back to the warmth of the boat.

9am we decided to move the boat back on to the Leicester Section of the GU, so we could moored away from other boats to run our generator for what maybe two to three hours. We reversed the boat back to the junction and made our way past Del and Al on NB Derwent6, who we hope to catch up with today.

 

The towpath we are moored up against is very muddy, so I had to be a bit careful, because I did not want to slip up especially as I am already suffering with my sciatica. All moored up, the generator is on, we will run for a few hours to give the batteries a good charge, and once in the “Float” mode Keith will set the Invertor/Charger into “Equalization” mode, which runs for one hour, and then see how things go, but at the moment as things stand it looks very likely that we will have to return to Market Harborough to get another set of batteries, the Simon the engineer was fairly certain that the new one’s we fitted before Christmas are not performing properly, so once again the bank balance will take a battering, but we have no choice but to sort this out, because we do not want to be limping around down south for the year. Oh the joys of being a boat owner, but I would not change my life for the world, so I smile through it all and just get on with living.