Jo and I treated ourselves to Christmas Dinner out at “The Sugar Loaf” in Market Harborough today. A glass of champagne each, and soup and granary bread to start things off, then this arrived.
A real plateful, it beat me, but only just, and there was Christmas pudding and cheese & biscuits to follow!!
Jo preparing to attack her dinner. The whole meal was excellent, and we look forward to doing it again, next year, possibly.
Keith.
Yesterday I ran the engine which I do once a week when moored for prolonged periods, to ensure it runs on both cylinders. We have found in the past that if we do not run the engine for a length of time it has a tendency to run on only one cylinder for about 10 minutes before the 2nd cylinders comes to life. by running the engine once a week this stops this from happening. Unfortunately yesterday after running for about 20 minutes there was no sign of life from the 2nd cylinder.
This morning we stripped the engine down, well, took the rocker covers off! My first port of call was to discover which cylinder was not firing, which is easy to do, by running the engine and using one of our large screwdrivers, stuffing it in place of the decompressor, but only decompressing one cylinder at a time, if the engine carries on running then the selected cylinder is the faulty one. In this case it was the sternward cylinder which was not firing.
Next step was to bleed the injector pumps to ensure that fuel was feeding through to them. I started with the sternward pump, and having loosened it some air bubbled out along with some fuel, so here was the problem. I checked the other pump and that bled perfectly. I restarted the engine and hey presto, both cylinders were firing, success.
Now recently I had tried starting the engine and forgot to open the fuel stopcock, which resulted in my having the bleed the pumps, and I think when I did this I must have not tightened the bleed screw properly. Especially as clear access to this bleed screw is restricted by one of the posts which accepts the rocker cover retaining bolts. So this time I removed this post and then tightened down the bleed screw properly this time. With everything refitted I restarted the engine to ensure all was well, which it was, Phewwww, I had been expecting the worse overnight.
Ever since we moved onto Hadar I have not been able to use my CB radio, which I installed. Today I finally discovered the problem in the form of a faulty antenna mount, which was giving a resistance reading between the antenna and ground, not good, and no wonder I could never adjust the antenna to the set. I had thought it was the cable, which was installed during the boat’s construction, and is behind the timber walls and ceiling, and I was not looking forward to having to fit a new cable but having it run around the inside of the cabin, very unsightly. I have placed an order for a replacement mount from Thunderpole, who are based not far from us, they are in Northampton, and hopefully upon it’s arrival and installation I should be able to finally get my CB radio working, after 5 years!
All I have to do i decide which of my 2 CB’s to use, either the Maycom EM-27.
or the Midland Alan 78 Plus Multi.
Decisions, decisions! But I have always liked Midland sets ever since my very first AM set back in the early 1980’s.
Keith.
Saturday we called into a local firm, The Battery Store” to buy 5 new domestic batteries for Hadar. We had heard them advertise on our local radio station Hfm. We selected the appropriate batteries and not only did they deliver them to Union Wharf for us, but even gave us a lift back, excellent service.
However, we soon discovered that these new batteries were too wide to fit in the trays. A quick phone call and a new set of different batteries were soon delivered and we soon had them installed.
This morning whilst cleaning up the old batteries to be collected by the same company, we discovered that the original 2 batteries, which were installed at the time that one of our batteries blew it’s tops off due to overvoltage charging 2 years ago, had both got splits in the cases, so as I had thought, that all 3 had been damaged. Hence the need to replace all of our batteries now.
These new batteries are traction batteries, usually fitted to such things as fork lift trucks, so it will be interesting to see how well these perform. Talking to the Dave the engineer who maintains the hire boats here at Union Wharf, he fits only traction batteries and finds them excellent for boating purposes. So far they are performing really well, in fact so good that this morning we did not run the generator, and when we ran it last night it was for a far shorter period of time, compared to the old batteries. This will definitely reduce our use of diesel quite dramatically.
Keith
Friday we discovered we have had a visitor in our hold. A multipack of crisps had been nibbled into, along with various of the packets of crisps inside. So this afternoon Jo popped down the town to Wilkinson’s and bought a pair of mouse traps.
Marmite has been sacked and needs a new home!!
Keith.
This is the towpath outside Hadar, a skating rink with bumpy bits!
Keith.
Just had to take this photo yesterday whilst walking into town.
Hope the Mascara is waterproof!
Keith.
First ice on the canal here at market Harborough this morning, but not very thick, the swans have managed with a struggle to break through it.
Yesterday Jo put the Christmas tree and decorations up inside Hadar.
Of course Marmite had to check out the decorations box for size!
Having been down the shops to buy some vegetables she had to make sure they were OK.
No boxes or bags to get into though!
Keith.
