Welding, Water and a sad ending

We set off on Tuesday from Nottingham along the canal to Beeston, via the river through Cramfleet lock and round the bend at Trent Lock.


We arrived at Redhill on the River Soar by around 4pm after a drop off at the tip with the accumulated water bottles. Thank goodness they have gone, we now have our bow back!

Our builder at Clean Sailing came to make the necessary arrangements for our stern deck and we planned to get the new deck going the following day. We pulled up by the electrics at the boatyard and by the morning Soar Valley Steel Boats were setting up with the welder in place.


So it was off with the old boards, good ridence, and instead we were having the steel plating either side and buffalo boards in the centre.


I had to head off to work so took the pathway along the fields towards the train station.


And when I came home, this is how it looked!


Today Leigh and I worked hard, hard, hard. Leigh did the necessary business of pumping out, we paid the builders, we filled the water tank. Yes we actually do have running water!

Alas, it was not a straight forward event, as with most things. I've realised that having a boat doesn't mean you know what you are doing. There unfortunately were no manuals for our boat, Haynes missed us out! So today we worked out what switches to have on, valves open, where to fill up and, joy! to have hot water coming from the taps!


There were some necessary tweeks involved after the first run of switching on the water pump. The tank takes a good 100litres so after Leigh's calculations of what we have so far been using this should last 10 days, mind you now we can shower it'll probably go down to 7days. The water tank is below foot level so we have to have a pump and small storage tank to get the water up and out of our taps. After some well needed PTFE tape and a bit of Leigh's tightening skills all initial drips from the pump area ceased, we had success! It might be a simple thing but after having not had running water at home since the end of April it seemed like a miracle we were actually running the taps!

Delia is not in our good books today after catching and wounding a small bird.

The tale continues....