Settling back in

Sunday 20th October 2013
Back into the (boring) routine of winter mooring.
We've been back to our quack to make ourselves know again. It's the only practice within easy reach of our mooring, but they do have a poor rating on line. I can see why. The organization seems poor, for instance they wiped me from their books again. Despite being told of our situation, they continue to send letters instead of texts or emails. When they go unanswered, as we told them would be the case, they assume we don't want to be there any more and take us off the books.
For the Nth time we explained what we would like to happen, and the girl on the desk just says "we can't do that".What she says they can't do is send mail to an address outside of their "catchment area". What a load of bo!!**cks. When I got to see the doctor it was a completely different story. "Of course we can do that" he says, and sent an instruction to the office. So, let's see if that works. They, once again, know to contact us by email or text.
We have both applied for senior rail cards, so will probably be taking more train journeys this winter.
On Thursday I got around to taking the washer/dryer apart to carry out the regular cleaning of the drying fan and ducting to ensure that the heater doesn't burn out prematurely.
Yesterday I made a start on trying to work out how I might carry out the changing of Lyra's propellor shaft seal. I had hoped to use one of the wiper rags which I have plenty of. Grease it and tie it around the shaft to slow down ingress of water while the seal is removed.
Not a complete success. The rags are not long enough to tie around the tail shaft, and it turns out that my arms are a bit on the short side for reaching  down and getting the rag around the shaft. I can, with difficulty, get it around, but then I want to tie string around it to get the best seal possible. It's right on the limit of my reach, and passing string around the shaft under water right on the reach limit is very very hard.
Next plan is to use a strip of old sheet, kindly donated by Tracy, one of our neighbours. There's still the problem of my lack of reach. I'll get there sometime.
I've just spent the afternoon watching bike racing. An absolute treat today. The final of BSB, won by Alex Lowes, the WSB won by Tom Sykes, and in Moto GP an absolute farce of a race leaving the season still open.