Well, that flew by!
It's been a bit of a busy start to the Year. Sadly my usually dependable Lexus started to show it's age and the gearbox started making all sorts of noises. I suspect several 300-mile journeys to Manchester and back after my Father passed away at the end of last year and in January for the funeral did for the poor beast.
So visits to the boat have been limited by how much mechanical sympathy I had for the car.
I re-established the Boat on it's mooring over the Easter Holiday Weekend. A truck tyre full of concrete and some fresh 10mm chain should provide security.
That's done, but the old sinker is about 12 inches away from the new one. I have to lift it at some point. I did say I'd donate it to the even skinter Jim so he could get his boat off the beach as well (the Harbourmaster has been calling regularly to get us to move our boats).
Sadly Jim passed away last week, so I don't know what's happening with his boats now. I'll still raise the sinker and put it in the place where Jim had his boat originally. I'll see if the family want me to move the boat off the beach for them.
It seems to be that as I reach 60 this year, the mortality of family and friends is coming to the fore.
I will certainly miss Jim. His humour matched mine and we spent many happy hours just sat on the boats chatting about the state of the world and how we'd put it to rights.
Here he is in happier times aboard Sprite:
RIP Jim, you will be missed.
Anyway, more on the lack of boaty stuff. I bought a cheap, more economical replacement for the Lexus about 5 weeks ago. As an aside, how dear are used cars at the moment? Especially small petrol cars. Due to the various cities in the UK declaring Ultra Low Emission Zones around them, the price of older Diesel cars has started to wane and small, economical Petrol car are now worth 2-3 times more than they were probably a couple of years ago.
It was cheap for a reason: it had a few issues. But I thought it might last a while while I saved up and sorted the issues out at my leisure. So I duly bought my bus ticket up to Manchester (a quarter of the price of going by train!) And to be honest, it did get me half way down the country. and I did drive it to work the day after. But on the second day, coming back from work the gearbox died! Well, exploded would be a better description. The gears trying to make an exit out of the case.
So I spent the next 4 weeks removing all the bits to remove the gearbox, selling the Lexus to fund a new gearbox and then a couple of weeks re-installing the replacement gearbox and all the associated gubbins.
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| See, I'm not just handy with Boats. |
It's been a bit full on the past few weeks!
The "new" car continues to cause issues. The expansion tank was cracked, so I replaced that last weekend but now the pressure in the cooling system showed a weakness in one of the cooling hoses. Replacing that is tonight's job.
So you can see, it's just not been practical to get down to the boat for a number of reasons.
Oh, and I had Covid again About 3 weeks ago.
In July I'm on holiday, on a cruise to Amsterdam. A freebie, for those wondering how a skint sailor can afford to get aboard P&O's finest. I may spend a couple of days on the balcony just watching the sea roll by. Just to recharge my emotional batteries. I've been close to spent both physically and emotionally over the past few months.
So, apologies for the lack of blogging. I have not been sat at home vegetating in front of the telly. I've been busier than a man of my advanced age should be. 😀
This Sunday I hope, and I stress I hope, to be lifting the old sinker. I did try on the Easter Monday, but I didn't have enough tide to do the job. Hopefully this Sunday the tides are at a reasonable time (H.W. 11:30) to be able to get on the boat while it's still on the mud, shackle onto the old sinker and let the tide raise the boat and hopefully the sinker.
Or Sprite may be doing an impression of a submarine doing a crash dive. I imagine the way my luck is at the moment it'll be the latter. We'll see.
To leave on a more positive note, I've got the charging system working perfectly now! Two 10W 12v panels in parallel seemed to provide enough oomph over the winter months to keep the battery topped up. I think the lowest it dropped to was about 12.6v and that's with the panels fixed facing the wrong way while the boat was on the beach. Now on the mooring the panels should point mainly to the South due to prevailing winds. The battery was up to 13.9v during the day so the charge controller has been backing off the charge current. Happy days!
UPDATE: The car continues to exhibit more health issues. Now the water pump has decided to leak. Yet another job. Although I'm not wishing it upon myself I'm sure the radiator will be next. That's just the way of these things, especially on a car that has been laid up for a while as I suspect this car has.
Trying to get it moving under it's own steam after a long slumber is proving a bit of a mission.
