Peter Greenwell's Blog

Have you ever had one of those days boys. I did last week!

For various reasons my wife and I had not booked anything for our summer holidays this year, in fact we had not even booked any leave at work. So by September we were ready for a break away from our normal work. We both booked the middle two weeks of September. The first four days were spent carrying out a long overdue major service on my motorcycle, which is my commuting transport, then we both spent four days redecorating the kitchen. After this we had a couple of lazy days at home.

Finally an opportunity came up to spend a day with the boat accompanied by our son and his wife. I had not taken the boat out since buying it back again, but had spent a little time fitting a car radio and tidying the wiring. I had also test run both the engines to make sure there were no problems needing attention. However this had been some weeks ago, and the boat had been in storage since then.

The morning started off a little overcast and should have been a warning of things to come, nevertheless we set of for Lake Windermere and along the way the sun came out and it looked promising. After arriving at Ferry Nab I registered the boat and paid for parking and slippage. It only took ten minutes to launch the boat as the slipway was deserted, one of the advantages of boating out of season.

Having settled the ladies we lads did the man thing of starting the engines, but to no avail, the main engine coughed and kicked the starter out of mesh but refused to run. After three attempts at cleaning and drying the plugs and starting we finally flattened the battery As a last resort I borrowed the battery off the car, but still no joy. I finally gave up with the main engine after a couple of hours, during which my wife made the usual helpful comments like “there's always eBay”. I concluded that we had stale fuel sitting in the bottom of the tank and fuel line, but even the five gallons of fresh fuel I had put in at the garage in Windermere was unable to freshen up the stale fuel.

"Never mind" I declared to the ladies hopefully. We will just have a potter around Bowness area using the little auxiliary Yamaha. This little 2.5 engine started straight away and we settled ready to leave the jetty, but just as I was untying the lines I noticed that the water tell-tail had stopped flowing, what a time for the impeller to fail.

By this time we were all fed up with the idea of boating for the day and decided pack it in. Just as we started to recover the boat onto the trailer the sunshine, which had held since our arrival, disappeared to be replaced with a steady drizzle. It was a rather damp group that finally set off for home, just as the heavens opened and heavy rain started.

As I said at the start, ever had one of those days?

 

It’s been very busy over the last week as I have been building a replacement trailer for my Fletcher. The old one is still usable but getting on in years now, it was built by “Winch On” a subsidiary of Dolphin boats which was owned by Brooklands Aviation. So that alone gives you an idea of how old it is, and it was not galvanised just painted.

Although built out of new steel sections and a modern axle system, I will reuse some of the rollers and the winch off the old trailer, but the swap over of parts will probably be done next spring now.

The boat has now been put into storage to clear the drive at home. I have removed all the electronics modules, but have not yet removed the prop or battery. The news that my son has just had his motorcycle stolen from his place of work has prompted me to do that this weekend. Even with the security at the storage site you dare not leave anything worth money easily available to the thieves these days, what a sick society we are becoming.

Another little job to do over the coming winter is to fit a radio tape player to the boat. These items are now out of date for use in a car, with CD players being the preferred option. However, for a boat that bounces around a tape player is better as it does not jump and skip like a CD player.

So tape players are now almost free at boot sales and I picked up a good Phillips unit that includes an auxiliary input for iPods etc, it also has the advantage that the security code feature can be turned off, so avoiding the hassle of recoding it every time the battery isolator is turned off. With a pair of marine speakers from E-Bay at £15 and a short rubber duck aerial fitted directly to the radio the project is easy and cheap to carry out.

So we now have the option to subscribe to BoatMart Digital, this gets us a downloadable version of the magazine. Leaping two or three steps ahead we will one day get movie clips instead of still pictures and sound bites instead of silence. Imagine the boat tests of the future, movies that show how the hull responds to tight turns and falling off the top of a wave for instance. Also imagine a test of the latest new outboard, instead of telling us how quiet the engine is, it can be demonstrated by, for instance, giving a verbal description in the cockpit while the engine is running at full chat in the background.

All very up to date and futuristic no doubt, but didn’t Harry Potter's newspaper do it first?

Don’t you just hate it when you buy a product to perform a particular job at the weekend, only for the product to fail miserably. I have just spent a full weekend trying to remove some rather small rust streaks from my boat. The product purported to remove rust streaks without rubbing or scrubbing, it didn’t do so even with rubbing and scrubbing. Not only am I out of pocket, but have also wasted a good part of the weekend. Never mind, my boat Dream Catcher is now about ready for use again. I do feel as if time is running out this year.

Although it still seems to be high summer, it is in fact only a few weeks away from the end of the season, unless you keep your boat in commission all year round. And why not indeed, with some good boating days available during the winter months when, although it might be cold, it can also be very sunny. A great day can still be had on inland waters if you wrap up warm and take a thermos with a warm drink along, also you often have the water to yourself and the jetties are usually empty, unlike in mid summer.

So when pricing up my insurance I am getting quotes for twelve months in commission this time.