Autumn cruise hits a few niggles

Just when you start feeling confident about your boat set up it bites you on the arse as a warning these things take some looking after (and if you do I guess they look after you ?)

We had a week off but due to family stuff I arrived at Percy Tuesday late morning after a food shop. The plan was for me to bring Percy up to the Fradley water point and load the boat from the car and Rachel would meet me after visiting her mum and sister. After watering up and moving the car stuff to the boat I pushed across the canal onto the 48 hour moorings and I noted I was still getting the E11 error click here.  It was evident he relay was not being operated  and having spoken to Merlin who sell the smartgauge/smartbank stuff they said it was unusual for the relay to be at fault, or fail as they are tested to 5 million connections (MTBF) I followed their instructions and tested it and it was working perfectly. I had cleaned the contacts but to no avail.....

I had other calls to Merlin and sought help from the folk on Canal world forum, ultimately Merlin asked I complete a warranty returns process and I am waiting for a  returns number to send the Smartbank controller back that I think is faulty.

But what to do.... I thought about just making a permanent connection to all batteries but there was a small risk we could not have power to start the engine - unlikely but I came up with a manual switch option so that when the engine was running I had the banks connected but when stopped and using the leisure bank I could disconnect the started so it was not depleted overnight.

I knew I had a 100 amp isolator switch in my on board' store' but it did not have a case  - designed to fit on a wooden box no doubt. So I employed my puzzle solving and came up with this....

A custom made box from the plastic maggot box I had on board.... it worked a treat and will stay in situ until  sort out the smartbank

As it turned out Rachel was late back so we stayed put and instead of the Woolsey arms we did the Mucky Duck and was very impressed, one of the best steaks I have had for a long time. Wednesday saw us go off down the Coventry for a change as I wanted to call at Streethay to return their chimney stove pipe template and get advice on my stove - which turned out as I expected, the guards van stove will not pass the 2013 BSC..... arse !! 

We ended up at Hopwas and had a mid afternoon meal and beer that saw me snoozing the evening away - note to self stay off the Perone.

We did take a walk in Hopwas Woods post lunch which was nice....

Thursday we went to the junction and winded .... 

 We had pasta on board so we cruised back up to just after Whittington and took a walk into the village for the Co-op for supplies than relaxed on board.

Friday we cruised back to Fradley in surreal warmth  - more like early summer than the end of September.

Sadly Rachel got a call so she needed to go to her mum leaving me to water up unload and make the last two lock back to our mooring.

I then set to cleaning Percy ready for a polish tomorrow - there will be little more cruising now so we need to prep the boat for winter, we will wind after waxing one side then do the other before a trip to the red carpet cinema at Barton turns with a meal before. Here endeth our holiday !