Over the last few months we have been quite busy on the boat. We have now passed our BSC and replaced the very large but somewhat over the top 5.5 kVa petrol gen set with a physically smaller 3 kVa diesel one with a view to finding this a home under the deck in the engine hole. We have also fitted a timer to the central heating so that we wake up to a nice warm boat and a tank full of hot water in the mornings.

Regular visitors to this site, or those of you still here after ploughing through everything so far will know about our ongoing 'why is the inverter flattening the battery ?' problem. Thanks to the BSC it has now been resolved. One of the jobs that needed doing was 'securing the batteries against movement' and it was suggested to us by the surveyor that welding on a 'U' bolt at each end of the battery tray, then securing via a ratchet strap would be the simplest solution. Arc welding + batteries nearby is not a good recipe so out came the batteries, and whilst they were out I checked the electrolyte levels. This is something that is hard to do in situ, the batteries being well and truly under the deck and line of sight not possible. One of the domestics was well down, in fact it needed over 1/2 gallon of distilled water, thus indicating it had seen better days. The other 2 batteries needed only a minor top up. Once re-watered and re-charged I checked the electrolyte with a hydrometer and lo and behold - a duff cell. All other cells on all other batteries read good so we replace one leisure battery.

Wych Way is now a few years old and over time quite a few of the windows seem to have developed little leaks and been repaired with varying degrees of success by the external application of silicon sealant. This looks ugly and isn't a good long term cure so we opted for the 'do it properly' approach. Whilst we were removing windows it seemed prudent to clean down to bare metal around the frames, treat any rust (surprisingly little as it turned out) and re-paint, thus saving a lot of rubbing down and masking off later.

So, out with the windows, peel off the old silicon, the old window tape, away with the rust and on with shiny new paint. We wanted to change the colour scheme away from the Black Prince scheme, but remain in theme, sympathetic to the boats' lines. In the end we went for International paint, just because I like the way it covers and applies, then settled on Rustic Red and Oxford Blue with white coach lines making rather more than the existing 2 panels.

I freely admit to using stick on coach lines from a car spares shop, who were somewhat puzzled as to why I wanted 12 rolls of the stuff.

We have noticed in the past that since we got rid of the 'two dogs back to back' pattern favoured by so many and the white crosses pattern that used to be on the pointy end we are a bit hard to see from a distance, particularly in the early morning and late night which are favourite times for us.

Out with the masking tape and a breakfast bowl as a guide for the circles and a few days later (to allow the layers to dry) we are resplendent with a new bow design. The pentangle was done with the coach tape too and took to the curve better than we expected.

So with the painting done it's cruising time.

Well maybe calling it a cruise made it sound like more than it was. We left on Saturday morning and came back on Sunday evening. However it did show off the new paint job nicely, it did give us a chance to try out the new gen set (a bit too noisy to run in the marina whist it is still above deck) and see how well the batteries stood up now we have 3 good ones.

We settle down for the night in 'our' mooring, somewhere on the T & M nicely in the middle of nowhere. The generator gets an hour of exercise (it needs to be run in according to the handbook) and performs flawlessly, the lads decide to take the canoe out for a bit, Em does a bit of painting and then we settle down for the evening with a board game that keeps us all amused for some hours. A quick run of the engine to top up the power, set the central heating timer switch for the morning and off to bed, fully expecting to be woken up half way through the night by the inverter telling us the batteries are too low.

And in the morning . . . 

All is well. So well in fact that when we finally roll out of bed at a little before 10 the batteries are still reading over 12 volts, the heating has been on and we have hot water. All systems are go - which given that we are planning a 10 day break over Yule and the New Year is a nice thought indeed.