The new fan motor for the dryer turned up and we are back in the laundry department.

The catalogue of failures seems to continue.

Our water pump started to give signs of failure the other day. Some adjustment improved the performance but it was short lived so I decided to replace it. A trip to the local chandlers produced a Jabsco pump which will replace it quite adequately. Of course it's a different shape and requires modification to the space where it fits. At first I thought that I wouldn't be able to get the drawer which goes under the step back into its place, but a bit of jigging around and it's now in place.

Cath finally pushed me into starting to replace the broken tiles on the kitchen floor and all that remains now is to grout them.

I have wired in the water heating thermostat on the new central heating and after a bit of a fight I at last managed to programme the thing, I think.

Cath spent the day making Seville orange marmalade and I can't wait to sample it.

Thursday 20^th January

I went to the chandlery the other day to get some sound proofing to put around the new heater. After putting it all over the thing there is no difference in the noise so it would appear that it is conducted and I'll have to try isolating the mounting from the hull some time.

It sometimes seems that everything is failing at once. I suppose the equipment in the boat is now 5 years old so we must expect a few things going wrong.

The latest culprit is the dryer part of our washing machine. The fan motor which circulates the air around decided to give up. I sourced a new one from a local repair shop and they will deliver it as soon as they get it in.

The front bearing on my Roto Zip tool decided to seize up and luckily a local engineering firm were able to remove it from the shaft for me and I should be able to get a new one and pop it back together. This is one of my favourite tools and I don't want to lose it.

Wednesday was Cath's birthday so we went out for a meal at the local pub then retired to the boat for a bottle of wine. A good night.

Saturday 15^th January

The wind is blowing up quite a bit outside, rocking the boat and causing the empty drums to rattle around a bit.

I'm feeling better all the time and hopefully will be good as new soon.

I have at last installed the wiring for the Hurricane in the correct place, so no more ducking around hanging wires. The next job is to wire in and programme the water heating stat and a summer/winter switch to isolate the radiators from the water heating in summer.

Wednesday12th January

The nurses have done their job and I'm finished the IV drugs and only have pills to take now. I'm feeling much better but still not back to normal. I have to visit the quack tomorrow to get a better idea of how things are going.

The new heating gave a moments concern on Monday but it was only low on fuel as I haven't been keeping on top of the tank levels. We did have fuel in stock so I transferred 4 drums and bled the system. All is well again.

The neighbours have been tremendous with offers of help, we had to change a gas bottle the other day and after trying myself, I was too weak to even lift the darn thing let alone get into the gas locker. Cue Bruce from Sanity Again, who saw me struggling and promptly popped in in for us. Nice one mate! Also the marina office rang saying they had heard I wasn't well and if they could do anything don't hesitate to ask. Wonderful place.

After getting a bit of cabin fever I decided I was OK to go out for walk around town which was great. Cath decided I needed a new coat as the real cold weather one I have is now old and abused by my having been down in the engine with it a few times. I'm now the owner of cracking new bright red coat. Cath says it's so she can't lose me. Poor deluded thing.

Friday 7^th January

All change again! By Sunday I was feeling rough and it soon became clear I was going down with flue. I've had the jab so didn't expect it to be too bad. Crank up the heating and just shiver through.

On Wednesday we decided that the main effects of the flue were gone but I had a terrible pain in my chest so decided a visit to the quack was in order. Couldn't get in until Thursday, where she told my I had pleurisy. Luckily, while this is normally a hospital job, this area runs a community based system where a team of nurses come around to your place and administer the drugs in your own home. So here I sit now, getting three times a day visits from the nurse for the drugs, and being told to do nothing. As a basically lazy guy I can live with this!.

After the first course of drugs I soon felt a lot better so things should be the right way up soon.

Cath is the one I feel sorry for because she is having to do jobs she has never done before, particularly emptying the cassettes.

Saturday 1^st January 2011

A Happy New Year to all. Our outlook is improving and the new central heating is now up and running, wow it gets hot, and it should as it is a lot more powerful than the other one. The only downside is the noise. The compressor is quite noisy and I'll have to look into some sound deadening. I've been ill for a few days now so I haven't managed to install all the controls properly, some of them are hanging on their wires, but at least we have heat.

We're still iced in and it looks as if it won't melt soon. There are boats on the marina which their owners want to get out because they should be somewhere else but the marina owners won't let anyone move because it would damage other boats with the ice pushed aside. Those people with pump out toilets have problem because they can't reach the station and so must pump small amounts into drums and carry them to the disposal point. One more tick in the box for having a cassette unit.

Christmas

Tuesday 21^st December

We had a lovely night out at The Swan in Stafford, the food and room were excellent.

Today I drove down to Calcott Boats and parted with a lot of money to get the new Hurricane Heater that we need to keep us warm. The trip there and back wasn't too bad but they have a lot more snow around there than we do here and the back roads that they are on were very snowy indeed. All we have to do now is wait for the engineer to come and fit the thing.

Wednesday 29th December

Christmas has come and gone and we had a wonderful time at John's place in Stafford. As you can see from the picture, Daniel had a good time as well.

Because of the ice we couldn't take the boat as somewhere to sleep so John re-arranged the sleeping plans and we took the already booked hotel room which saved us from having to drive home every night. On Boxing Day I decided that we should at least visit the boat to see how it was coping with the record low temperatures. Of course the car wouldn't start! Damon came to the rescue and drove me out to Great Haywood. The temperature inside the boat was -4 so I took the chance of leaving the electric heater on its frost setting to see if the frozen pipes could be saved.

We arrived back on Monday to find that my plan had worked and the only damage was to the shower unit's temperature control. During that evening the electric feed tripped, so I reset it and checked to see if I could find the cause. Nothing showed up, but after a while it tripped again. I started shutting things down to try to find the cause but nothing worked and the trips continued at random intervals, sometimes a few hours long.

Tuesday I drove into town to get another shower mixer and fitted that during the afternoon. The nuisance trips continued despite all my efforts and over night we relied on the batteries. On Wednesday morning I started again to check out all the systems and wires to try to find the cause. While I had the boat disconnected from the power the main feed again tripped! What a relief, it wasn't us at all, but a fault in the feed system. The marina engineer was called and had it fixed in a few hours.

Meanwhile the engineer arrived to start work on our new heater. I had already started to remove the old unit so I left him to it while I got on with installing the wiring and controls in the living area.

The engine compartment is now ready for the heater and the fitter will be back tomorrow to continue the installation, maybe even finish it.