May is out

"Ne're cast a clout 'til May be out" is a fine old saying. We have just had the hottest April in centuries and very little rain for ages. It has therefore been fine boating weather.

However, the batteries have been flat and very hard to charge. The engine therefore has been very hard to start and we have been not very far at all! In fact the only progress we have made is 500 meters down the canal toward town to be near to a boat yard and to get out of the way of the British Waterways dredgers who were working down the canal and passed our mooring.

We did achieve something this month though. Having attempted to revive the batteries many times we have now thrown the lot away and installed four new ones. The engine now starts like a dream! One of last month's problems sorted.

The other one that was fairly easily sorted was the loo. Apart from being rubber gloved for a long time replacing the toilet seals and holding down bolts was a fairly painless job. The toilet is now secured with stainless steel fixings to replace the powdered mild steel ones, the seals have been replaced and the area cleaned up nicely. It is now a throne fit for the captains mate!

Oh, and the saga of the diesel leak is now temporarily over. A wonderful friend procured me a roll of 'self amalgamating' tape. This wonderful double sided tape sticks to itself so firmly that it forms a homogenous mass. A few lengths of this were wound around the leaking joint and now there is no leak. What two boatyards of engineers and a travelling marine engineer could not achieve was completed by a post office engineer's bodge.

However the saga of the oil remains. I could get rid of the boat batteries at the local recycling centre but not the oily waste. No they only take old engine oil. So the can of watery diesely oily waste remains at the mooring. We will separate the water from the oil and try again.

Next week another job will be undertaken by the local dry dock: Sonflower goes in for bottom blacking, a biennial job to stave off corrosion below the water line. A corrosion inspection will be undertaken at the same time.

Another May job is the planning of the Summer cruise. We think we will visit the Cheshire Ring this year. The Peak Forest , Bridgewater and Macclesfield canals will be new to us.