About Me

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The name describes my demeanour and voice! I love narrowboating and that is why this blog is mainly about the boat and our interaction with it. I have been keeping a log for Sonflower ever since we bought her and moved onto her as our main residence. Some incidents in our boating life have been hilarious, some scary and some down right dangerous. I cannot tell what will come in the future but you can now share them! The crew are an 'ordinary' couple. The Best Mate and I.

Saturday 31 August 2013

BACK CRUISING

SONFLOWER has visited Tooley's Boatyard. After a long wait, the replacement engine foot arrived from Culcutt Marine, by post, on Wednesday.

 John worked on the boat on Thursday and Friday to replace the engine foot (including a difficult withdrawal of the broken stud),

    
  to sleeve the main cable loom where it passes through the bulkhead from engine bay to cabin,


  and to clip insecure gas piping with a clip within 6 inches of every joint.

All that completed, we took our granddaughter for a ride this afternoon to turn the boat round ready for return to hime mooring via Sovereign Wharf on Monday.

                                                                                                        1.1/2 Miles; 2Locks, 2 LB, 2 hrs

Thursday 8 August 2013

FAILURE

The Boat Safety Scheme Examination yesterday resulted in a failure!

1. ENGINE : the front RH mounting foot is cracked, a stud has sheared and the mounting collapsed.

2. GAS SYSTEM: a few clips are missing

3. ELECTRICAL WIRING A wiring loom has no protection (grommet) where it passes through the bulkhead


The expected call to Tooley's Boatyard has been made and cruising is suspended for the near future.

Tuesday 6 August 2013

BSE DAY

Tomorrow is the Boat Safety Ezamination Day.

I am resigned to it.

He arrives at 10.00am.

He writes out a list.

I take the boat to Tooley's and they fix it

He comes back and says it is ok

I hand over loads of money!

Friday 2 August 2013

Throw Away Society


Here is all the fire equipment from the boat all lined up ready for taking to the specialist testers who checked them out the last time I had a Boat Safety Certificate Examination.This is to satisfy Section 17 of the examination that requires the Fire Equipment to be maintained in good condition and kept accessible. I like to check they work as well.

You can see that they are all labelled with the name and address of the testers. So I took them round there to find that the place is now one of the many many beauty parlours that are sprouting up all over Banbury. I rang their number and spoke to Kate. She explained that the company had now moved to Buckingham but there were engineers in the area who would inspect the appliances. She then asked "what the date was in the bottom right hand corner of the label?" "2009" I replied. "Oh", she said! "That means they all need emptying and refilling. That will be £13.50 for the small ones and £18.50 for the larger one." To do all of them and a £3.50 inspection charge for the Fire Blanket would have cost £62.50

I went to Screwfix and bought brand new Dry Powder extinguishers, the only ones I really need, for £55.97

Here is the set of Fire Equipment now on the boat.



Anyone want 2x 1Kg and 1x 2Kg Dry powder Fire Extinguishers, unused, but over twelve years old?