Fubarr'd starter battery and the Junction Inn passes its test

A lazy start out in the sticks last Thursday. It took me four attempts at extricating myself from the bank, a combination of a less than favourable wind and a shallow mooring reminded me of my need to refresh my simple boating skills such as they are.

We then met the only other boat on the move of the day just as we approached the couple of Bridges before High Onn moorings plus wharf winding hole. Another near perfect wind (so not all skills lost) saw us on the furthest extent of our cruise. I then took Leia for a muddy walk along the tow path as Rachel expertly steered Percy to a lunchtime stop off at Brewood for an amble and a few supplies.

Brewood does not have a centre as such but does have some fine mixed properties, this unusual gate caught our attention

 

Suitably ambled and supplied we set off again, this time with Rachel walking Leia to our planned overnight stop at Norbury Junction. 

All quiet now, give it another eight weeks and there will be no moorings available after 3pm....

Percy was quite a way down, when we get the chance we moor away from other boats if we have Lilly the cat on board with us.

On both am startups the starter battery failed me. For a starter it's not great, just over 5 years as my blog tells me it was replaced in November 2014. However it was a 'duel purpose' battery, the same as the three leisures I brought all together so another hint at not really being the right thing for the job.

I have a Smartbank on Percy that with a touch of a button on the control panel it connects the starter to the leisures via a very beefy relay which got us going. So I called into  Norbury to check their prices....

As for starter batteries  - Norbury were selling starters for £77 each - 643 and 644 I worked out were different based on the location of positive and negative terminals. My only question is the CCA (Cold Cranking amps) which I understand to basically be the 'torque' of the battery. Now Percy is a big three litre 2 cylinder engine  - think 2 BMC 1.5's side by side and for each of my cylinders they have four - so that some heavy internals needing spinning up from within a lot of cold sticky oil. It needs some beef so my research is what is a good CCA for such an engine?

Finally we tried the Junction Inn for food. Last time ( a long time ago) it was not a great experience. This time we got a warm personal welcome as well as a warm room welcome. 

The food was good, on recommendation I had the steak pie that was just lovely. We'll do it again.

On the Friday morning we got the donk started and had a lovely cruise back up through Grub Street cutting and back to our mooring.