After tea and cakes in the sun, lunch and more drinks, target shooting with a catapult, getting coal from a passing coal/diesel boat and visiting the local goats and horse...
and feeding them grass...
we realized we had better make a move.
The plan was to stop off at the marina to use the facilities and carry on back the way we came - towards Rugby. We said farewell to Rupert and Dylan, it was 4.15 and the marina would be closed soon. Delia was itching to get out the boat and stretch her little legs so we found a lovely mooring next too a wheat field and made dinner over a camp fire under the darkening sky.
We were soon enough back at the 180degree junction - Hawkesbury Junction where Leigh did a beautiful maneuver winding the boat in one great swoop to head straight in an empty lock. We cruised another mile until there was an almighty crunch and scraping noise in the engine bay. We moored up at a suitable point as soon a possible to discover that the drive belt from the pulley on the shaft to the alternator was twisted and the metal pulley had moved and was scraping against a metal bracket.
For those that have no idea what this is about, i'll quickly explain. The shaft from the propellor goes through the engine casing and at one end is the pulley (which looks like a big cog). A rubber band - the drive belt, goes round this to another smaller cog on the alternator. This movement of the cog on the alternator charges our batteries; the engine starter battery (much like a car) and the two domestic batteries (our brilliant 6v traction batteries) thus, we can start the engine and have electricity aboard.
Let me point out that neither of us are mechanics in any way. I might know how to change an inner tube on a pushbike but that is about it, Leigh has great instinctual skills but he is not experienced in tinkering away under a bonnet. After half an hour of trying to turn the belt round, we called up some more knowledgeable folk who advised on what to do. We slackened the alternator and popped the belt off. This was a new belt we purchased in March - when we had the engine serviced. Being made of rubber, the belt had softened and buckled being twisted on the pulley. It would no longer sit straight and we had to fix it back on at an angle until we reached the next boatyard to get a new belt. We carried on and then the heavens opened so we moored up for the night.
We reached the rose narrowboat marina the following day and picked up a drive belt. In replacing it, we discovered that the nut to secure the pulley was no longer tightening. On further inspection, the hole was threaded on the pulley and the thread on the nut was gone -it was an aluminium pulley with a steel nut as Leigh pointed out not a good combination. The pulley was beyond repair (unless it could be melted and reset - but who does that now?) so we looked into getting a new one.
By this morning we had our hands on a smashing new pulley and after a bit of brute force from Leigh we had it in place and the belt on by the early afternoon. During all this, we had it made clear that the cogs (alternator and old pulley) required different thicknesses of belts so with the new one we now had the right belt and the right sized pulley.
As as we set off for Rugby again, the rain poured and poured so we pulled over and moored and here we are on the outskirts of Rugby wondering if we should head through the festival goers and boats moored in threes at Braunston this bank holiday weekend or not.
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