Well as we only had a small amount of fuel in the tank, we took advantage of Derick on “Ambush” visiting the moorings. I chugged up and took on 100 litres of fuel and only a couple of bags of coal as we already had some stored which should last us well into the new year when he’ll be visiting in his van, though, as there’s a stoppage on the Leeds & Liverpool which will stop him coming through.

We now have some Supalux, for the new stove area which although not enough, will cover the bottom half of the boat. We can then get it tiled and give Eddie the nod. The rest of the area will be tiled after the stove is fitted as there’s plenty of space around it for access.

This coming weekend is the Christmas Party down at the boat club, where a good time is usually had by all. My next post my contain some pictures of me, in a rather enebriated state, if you’re lucky, or unlucky as the case maybe. Aswell, this weekend, some good friends of ours are luckily enough to spend 3 months over in Africa due to being retired, and I have been nominated to look after their boat for them. I was shown around the boat and now I’m comfortable with the general running of the boat, and I was even invited to take the boat out for a run now and again to charge the batteries, it’ll need to be run anyway so I may aswell go for a trip up and down the canal.

Well, as it’s been some time since I last posted, a fair few things have happened. We already had cut an inspection hatch out of the top of the diesl tank, and cleaned in thoroughly. The next job was to replace some of the diesel we’d removed, but not all as we didn’t want to put any crud back in the tank. To do this, we just pumped the diesel back from the drums back into the tank via the drill pump and filter. We put around 60 litres back into the tank, leaving it about 2 inches from the bottom which was enough to bleed the engine and get it running to put some charge back into the batteries as it’s been a fair few weekends without it running.

Eddie, from Northern Fabrications visited us last Sunday to measure up and advise about the fitting of the new stove we have now ordered. There’ll be plenty of space he says, but we do need to line the area in Supalux which we will then tile. I am conscious of the fact that we won’t have the stove before Christmas, but this is to be expected due to the amount of orders he’s received and also because we have left it so late into the year.