Almost got our tarpaulins sorted

I tried last Winter to finish the job of replacing the rotting tarpaulins and their equally rotten pine fixing strips.

I've replaced the pine with oak offcuts and, in doing so, fixed a lot of our leaks ;o)

I removed the rotting wood strips and the plastic sheeting

Then fitted the new tarpaulins using oak offcuts, looking good and wind and waterproof too ;o)

We have finally got our blog back!

A while back, those lovely people at Google decided to change the way their accounts worked, resulting in them asking me to change my e-mail address, which I didn't want to do. we were then frozen out of our blog and my calendar Grrrr!
Finally sorted it out. So we should have a few updates in the coming days ;o)

Off with her head!

We finally managed to coax the Bowman heat exchanger away from the cylinder head and then remove the head. Our neighbour Bob off NB Puffin was kind enough to help us.

The inspection hatch, that I cut out while Freyja was in drydock, proved invaluable. Bob looked spookily ready for Halloween!

Just over twelve hours later I'd taken the head to Wales and Brian North had pressure tested the valves, checked the stem seals and re-faced the head (which was on the concave side!)

We've added an immersion heater ;o)

We decided to fit an immersion heater so that we could have hot water quickly, even when the engine was drained (it takes ages to heat the water using only the Jøtul's back boiler)
Tim, the hero that saved The Cock in Denford from closing, is also a plumber and he agreed to fit it for us, it's only a 1Kw version, so we'll be able to use it with our generator if, for any reason, we can't run our engine.

Glenda has been very busy

Glenda has started to experiment with the bedding, curtains and drapes, as we are trying to find suitable pashminas that suit the lovely bedding that Glenda found in a sale ;o)

 

We have a lovely and seemingly rare Jøtul 404 dual fuel range, but we've struggled to get the best out of it because it's Norwegian and all the controls were foreign to us!

After a few online searches we found a PDF version of the instruction manual here 

Our lovely Jøtul 404 has had it's legs shortened at some time.

Once we knew how to use it to it's best advantage there was no stopping Glenda. She was like a contestant for the Great British Bake-off!

We had lovely bread, pies and cake, Yum!

There's a Railroad running through the middle of our Marina!

We returned to boats on Saturday, as we both have some time off. 

There have been a few changes around here in the last few weeks. there is now a slipway complete with railway track and bogey.

The slipway with it's rail tracks laid and the bogey, which will be cable-winched to haul narrowboats and widebeams out.

The slipway, railway, bogey and Clive's dredger (looking towards the new cruiser moorings)

Looking from the cruiser moorings side.

 The cruiser and maintenance moorings have been almost completed.

There was a shortage of narrowboat moorings so Clive has added some shorter cruiser moorings to free up more of the 60 foot pontoons that are occupied by shorter cruisers etc.

Clive will also be moving his floating drydock from WillyWatts Marina (behind the Mill tearooms) around to a spot near the cruiser moorings and it will be under cover.

A lot of boats have moved pontoons and a fair few new boats and faces have arrived, the marina is getting fairly full now, as many people have moved from river moorings to our floating pontoons after all the flooding last Winter.

Birmingham Floating Market

This weekend I drove the Welsh band 'Kids in Glass Houses' to The Asylum venue in Snow Hill, Birmingham. Glenda drove her son Nick up to Harper Adams college, north of Birmingham.

This worked out great, as it coincided with the first floating market on the canals around the International Conference Centre, near Gas Street Basin. 

We wandered around the trade boats and met up with John Sloan who had organised it, then went for a pint and a gongoozle at the Canalside Cafe.

Later we took a ride in Victoria, one of the trip boats that run from Gas Street Basin

We came across a group of lunatic 'pirates' on surfboards!

These 'pirates' were paddling surfboards for charity

The girl on the left about to fall in, damn! wish I'd been videoing it. ;o)
In the evening we went The Prince of Wales pub where we met with fellow members of the fledgling Association of Continuous Cruisers and where I was able to put faces to people I talk to frequently on Canal World Discussion Forum