I have seen snails that move faster

Ed came yesterday and made sure the engine and prop were behaving. We’d been experiencing the singing prop phenomenon at particular revs. We were pleased to see that, since exchanging the great big enormous humungous alternator for a small svelte slim one, the engine mounts have not loosened at all. I have said on the blog before that we’d had to have the engine mounts tightened 3 times in 6 weeks when the GBEHA was in place.

Ed also looked at how to hook up the radiators that are currently linked to the bubble stove to the Webasto. Unfortunately, without adding another couple of batteries, it’s not really viable. And adding batteries means building a place for them on the swim. So we are going to use the bubble stove with a couple of the radiators closed off and see if it is more efficient than with them all going – when we’ve used it previously, the stove has barely warmed the radiators. When we’ve used it over the coming  weeks or so and formed an opinion (or two knowing David and me), we will consider the options and costs while we are back in NZ and decide what to do. Ed did tell us that the bubble stove is designed to be left running all winter, so when it gets consistently colder we will set it going and see what it’s like. We only used it in short bursts back in June.

We have moved a HUGE distance in the last few days, not! We are now about 700 yards from where we moored on Saturday and Sunday, and we chose last night’s mooring because there is a pub close by where we went for dinner last night. We shared a table with Alison and Mick from nb 3 No Trumps who we are moored in front of on the 48 hour moorings – no gaps and we had a shorter boat come and moor up right in front of us late yesterday in the rain, so the whole of the mooring was used efficiently. I do like that!!

This morning the weather is changeable again but according to the hourly forecast it is meant to be cloudy but sunny this arvo. So we will probably move on down to the next waterpoint by Hall Green, fill up, pull back and moor up for the night. If we are feeling very energetic we will leave the Maccie by travelling through the stop lock (1 foot drop) and turn on to the Trent and Mersey again. It seems ages since we were on any canal but the Maccie or the Peak Forest. On looking back at previous posts, it seems we have been here since 4 July. I’ve just looked at the length of the Maccie and the Peak Forest, including down the Marple Locks. It’s 34.25 miles. In 46 days, if my maths is correct, we’ve puddled around on 34.25 miles of canal. Of course much of that has been traversed 4 times and we’ve had a two and a half week break away from the boat while David was in NZ and I was with Lesley in Essex Kent. But even so, our pace has been slower than many snails…

There are exactly 7 weeks till we leave the UK for this year, and probably only 6 of those we’ll be boating. So I wonder if our pace will pick up now?