One of the best days of the year - for SAD people

I am a SAD person  - Seasonal affective disorder.... not the best place to live in the winter -a canal boat. It is dark when I leave for work and dark when I arrive home during a decent chunk of the winter.

Well today marks the shortest day so tomorrow it will be a smidgin lighter in the morning and the same in the evening. OK it is barely noticeable but like old age and obesity it sneeks up on you and before you know it I'll be fishing again to 10pm in my T shirt !!

So I will toast nature and the universe tonight as they tip me back into the warm months I need and the light my body demands.

Roll on summer !!

£120 lighter for an essential (for me) reassurance

For those waiting with bated breath to find out about the outcome of the Smartgauge E11 error.... as blogged about here  - the outcome was a reported Fubarred Smartgauge and/or Smartbank as advised by Merlin who now supply the units.

Options were to keep my maggot box switch that manually connected the leisure and starter while charging (never going to do this despite the ingenuity it looked crap and I'd forgotten to disconnect the starter from the leisure bank a couple of times and this could be my undoing by draining down the starter so I could not start the engine to charge the leisure bank)

So as the units were out of any warranty I paid up the £100 plus vat for a new Smartgauge and Smartbank -the relay being tested ok. Daft you cannot buy the Smartbank as individual items - you have to buy the full set including the relay !!

I have to assume I buggered it up when re wiring the battery bank here .... so an expensive lesson learnt. It has taken me to now to reinstall the supplied parts and I have been living back on board for about three weeks - relying on the MTTP controller that shows three states of charge for the batteries good, needs charging and 'o' dear ! I got down to needs charging but no idea what state of charge other than I needed to run the engine.

So I conclude I need the Smartgauge and the Smartbank to keep my batteries charged as they should be and to tell me when to charge. I am one of those that the canal forums refer to as a serial Smartgauge watcher.... but the the batteries are an essential for the boat and comfortable living.

Knowledge is power so they say...!!

The relay back in place replaces to maggot box and manual switch that I forgot to switch off the connection between the leisure bank and the starter..... risky 

My temp lashup ....

I celebrated by leaving the engine charging while emptying the cassette in the last light of a deserted Fradley junction. The smartgauge needs a few cycles of charge/discharge to establish the current state of charge of the battery bank, it is a fit and forget system, only I'll be checking the %'s as is my habit. 

The madness of men

... ok I am sure there will be a few ladies out there doing what I (we) did the first Sunday in December.

My friends in the south organise a SBC  - Sunday Breakfast Club, a meet for a coffee, a ride around the south east somewhere finishing at an establishment that serves cooked breakfasts. Now when the sun is high and the fields and hedgerows are green this is a good idea. However when the sun is low and bright and the temperature is minus 4 c at 8am you have to question the sanity of those involved.

But hardy and roughty tufty biker I am I was donning my thermals at 7.30 am Sunday morning and heading out to Newlands Corner via Watery Lane.... but it was Ice Lane. When I did the 50 plus miles and met my fellow bikers I was advised on the Pan it was showing -4c I think if I'd known that I'd have turned round before hitting Icy Lane !

My BlueDeau is in the foreground

The view from Newlands Corner

 Yep - very icy, but riding in such conditions keeps your awareness sharp !

Warmth and sustenance 

It did not last long the body furnace was burning hard to keep me warm 

Might have to miss the January one as I think I'll be on the boat that weekend, but we'll see !

How I like it

I do feel the cold..... when I have been out in the cold for a decent amount of time it feels like I am exhausted -   think my body works hard to maintain my core temp, I am sure this is the case for everyone but it just seems to hit me harder? 

Anyhow don't feel too bad for me, that common question/perception  -isn't it cold living on a boat, well my simple (no pumps) central heating system from the stove has the boat just under 25c inside against an external temperature of just 1c - ok the gauge is up near the ceiling but suffice to say I'm not cold nor is the rest of the boat apart from the engine room and rear cabin  - that doubles as my fridge. 

We had a bit of a move around after we got the sofa in so Leia no longer can sleep under the sofa but she how has the true dog position in front of the fire.

A have made a large pot of stew that'll do me for the next three nights - easy living just heat up a pan full a night, no prep and minimal washing up. Shame there is no such thing as smellivision as the boat has a lovely aroma as I prepare my vitamin C special !

Fradley and Percy give me a special welcome home

So I am back living aboard NB Percy. Some might say its not the best time to re-start a life afloat (I lived aboard in 2014/2015 but that started in July  - a very different approach was needed then.

Fradley and Percy looked at their best when I arrived this morning. The canal is frozen just past my neighbour Mandy's boat but as the forecast for the next few days is no more frost I guess this will recede.

Percy was covered completely in a duvet of Ice crystals, inside all was well as we had visited and Rachel had kindly give the inside a good clean through.

The sun was still very low in the sky and I doubt much was going into the batteries from the solar.

I had brought my super sized fire lighter - basically one of the 2 hour instant logs that cost about £1.80 from Sainburys.... I cut it in half and lit it surrounded it with coal and the boat was on its way to being my home again for the foreseeable future. 

Then it was the real test to see if Percy had survived the -7c from last week. Water on, taps closed, Morco refilled and waited for the pump to stop  - and it did. If the pump keeps pumping you have either left a tap open or a pipe has opened up somewhere on the boat. 

In 2010 we had this happen on our last boat NB Waterlily - I blogged about it here 

So I have gas/water/coal and hopefully on my return later today a warm boat. I brought he large stew pot back from the cottage and stocked up on veg and stewing meat so tonight a large pot of stew will be made that'll keep me going for the next couple of nights..... a simple joy !

Let the adventure begin (again).

The river in flood and things that cannot be thrown away

We had last week off to pack the house ready for storage (not the house its contents  !) I took the chance to walk Leia across the park to the river that was well in flood after the heavy rains of last Monday.

Darley park is the most beautiful park in Derby and starts at a world heritage site of Darley Abbey mills When we were just married I always aspired to live the other side of this river and we were lucky enough to buy a house just 5 minutes walk on the right side of the river (for me) We have lived in this house that we converted to a home for 21 plus years. it is now back to a house and ready for someone else to make into a home.

A few more pics from my park walks this last week or so.....

Part of our clear out was the loft and the garage.... 21 years of accumulated stuff.

One of our Callum looking angelic 

Another small snippet of Toms childhood and his application....."2 days work" !!

Whilst I was filling a 6 ton skip from the garage and any other place I could empty this little crew had a trip in a washing machine and went off to charity - or so I was told, I have a suspicion I might see one or more when we eventually unpack !!

Happy days and sad days but if we want adventures we need to press on with some change.... keep reading ;-)

PS - Absolute respect to those who empty their homes to make a life on a narrowboat. All I can say is Rachel is good friends with the Derby Park Farm charity shops who were nearly fighting over my gaming chair (sob) plus a lot of other stuff.

Don't get too carried away with the romance of boating

Whilst there is no doubt there is a romantic and peaceful bias when people consider boating and living aboard there are some realities.

I could not detail the precise number of times on canal forums people join and their early post is a open statement of a desire to get a boat and live aboard and what's it like. The standard answer is hire before buying and ideally hire in autumn/winter to get the real deal feel.

Well today was one of those not so romantic boat chores. Akin to the vet with arm up the back end of an unfortunate cow is the task of chimney sweeping our front stove. Unlike conventional sweeping, on a boat this is done top to stove so all the claggy muck drops down. Now on a standard  Morso there is a baffle plate to stop the flames going up the chimney and no doubt setting it on fire... This plate comes out to allow all the crap from the chimney to drop into the grate. Easy !

Now on my back boiler Morso the plate is the back boiler so it does not come out. Two options

1. Remove the chimney from the stove and dig the bad stuff out - time consuming and seals have to be remade 
2. My option is the vet type option - get your hand in over the plate.

No 2 sounds simple but it is messy and contorted. Now I know why 12 year olds were sent up chimneys - supple. However I did not have one to hand so had to DIY...

The happy looking stove ...

Ready to get stuck in.....

The glove had limited protection....but my Mr Tickle moment was underway

That is all the ash that I scooped off the top of the back boiler plate  - a fair bit

The rest of the fire got a decent clean... fire bricks out and the back of the ash pan was cleared out also.

Finally the door was off and the glass given a decent clean.

So that nasty job out of the way Rachel followed through the boat with the Dyson running off the genny.

Hopefully I'll give a fuller update on all this shortly ... but for now the fire is set fair to keep me warm all over what might just be a cold winter this year.

... and don't let me dent your passion for all thinks boating, when we sadly left as we needed to go and sort Rachel's mum out the sun was just setting and Fradley was at its best....