Home Again

After a great week on the boat we have made it back home safe and sound. Naughty-Cal has performed faultlessly and has not set a foot wrong.

More pictures will follow later in the week when I have sorted them out.

Witham Wandering

We are having a very relaxing week so far on the Witham. We have had a fair old mix of weather but it is just nice to be away.

The river is very quiet. In fact we can't ever remember it being this quiet at this time of the year. 

We are currently moored in Boston and undecided if we will stay tomorrow or move on. We will decide tomorrow when we get up.

Tonight we have a pasta dish to keep us fed.

Scuppered

Unfortunately we didn't manage to get the heater sorted out in time for the off tomorrow. A problem with the glow plug which needs a replacement has scuppered any chance of having it ready in time. But the weather looks set to be fair so we won't need it hopefully. Naughty-Cal is a warm and dry boat so we can hunker down in the cosy cabin if the temperatures drop chilly in the evening.

We have a home delivery coming this morning with some supplies to keep us fed and watered during the week. We shouldn't really need much in the way of shopping in the week while we are away other than a bit of fresh veg and some meat towards the end of the week.

So we have just one more day at work to contend with.

Praying for Heat

The parts to service and hopefully fix the Webasto diesel heater onboard Naughty-Cal finally arrived yesterday. Sods Law of course dictated that it decided to break on the day that we showed her buyer around the boat. Now that sale has fallen through and we have decided to keep the boat we need to get that fixed as a top priority.

We have ordered for it a new gasket set, a new burner cartridge and a new glow plug. Liam has already stripped it down and given it a clean out. It wasn't too bad this time as it wasn't all that long ago it was last serviced, a few years at most. A far shorter time then between it's last strip downs which was verging on ten years!

Today at work Liam will reassemble the heater with the new parts and then tonight after work we will pop across to the marina and get it back on the boat. Fingers crossed it will then work. If not we will look at getting a new heater unit as this one has had enough money spent on it now and it is an older obsolete unit. 

The decision will then be whether to replace it with the newer Webasto 2000 STC unit or join the ever growing group of boat owners who are installing the chinese copy heater units.

Ticking Them Off

We only had a fleeting visit to the boat on Saturday morning. We wanted to get a few little jobs sorted out and get some supplies loaded onboard ready for our week off next week. It is surprising how much beer the lockers beneath the saloon seating can swallow up. With it still being unclear just which shops, pubs and restaurants will be open we are making sure that we take plenty of supplies with us for the trip.

We managed to get a few little jobs ticked off the list. The water tanked was flushed through again. We are happy that the water system is now clean and safe for drinking. The VHF aerial was rewired and new connectors fitted. We appear to have an electrical fault with the white forward and rear facing navigation lights. We will have a closer inspection of this when we get back. But it may be that this needs rewiring.

The service parts for the Webasto heating have arrived so we are hoping to get this rebuilt and back on the boat on Wednesday evening. With a bit of luck this should see it working again. We don't really need the heating at this time of year but it does come in handy for drying out wet clothing should we get caught out in the rain.

We also have a new USB socket for the dashboard as the previous one has now failed. But we forgot to take this to the boat with us on Saturday. This is only a two minute job to change though so we will do it somewhere along the way.

Life in Lockdown

As with most of the country we spent from mid March to Mid June in lock down. I was able to work from home, and still am working from home, while Liam was furloughed and had eight weeks to keep himself busy.

As luck would have it we had predicted we would be going into lockdown long before it actually happened so we had stocked up the food cupboards and stocked up on DIY products so that Liam could go about turning our new build fresh out the box house into our warm and welcoming home. The house had had a year to settle in and dry out so now was as good a time as any to start the transformation.

In just eight short weeks Liam repaired shrinkage cracks and decorated almost every room in the house. We just have the downstairs loo to tackle which will be a nice winter project we reckon.

Here are a few pictures of his handy work.

The living room gained a grey theme with stone feature wall

The Jeep sitting at home in the living room

The kitchen became a sage colour.

This is a difficult room to photograph with the two windows and the patio doors there is a lot of light flooding in which makes the pictures appear dark!

The smallest bedroom became a bit of a retro room with bed settee and a host of 1980's items.

The guest bedroom got a mini makeover as well

The master bedroom we painted in the same relaxing colour as the kitchen.

But with a feature tartan wall to break up the paint.

Ad the ensuite gained a painted wall to break up the white.

The last room we managed to paint before it was time to go back to work was the family bathroom. We went for a simple Nutmeg white to give the room a warmer feel.

And hung some simple Norfolk Broads pictures.

The house does now feel much more like a home now that we have put our own mark on it. Had lock down not happened Im unsure as to when we would have had the chance to get this work done. It was certainly handy Liam having the time off work to get this done.

All Aboard

With the announcement from Boris yesterday that we can stay onboard our boats from 4th July we can now start to look forward to our week away onboard Naughty-Cal. We were starting to get doubtful that this outing would be able to take place. We have had that week booked off work for months, since the back end of last year in fact.

We know that the waterways are going to be busy that week as everyone rushes out to make use of their boats but with that in mind we have settled on a steady run down the River Witham. It will be some 18 months or more since we last cruised on the Witham so it will make a nice change of scenery.

It remains to be seen if we visit any pubs along the way. We will take plenty of food and drink to cover all eventualities. 

Starting A Fresh

By now we should have had a small motorhome on the drive and Naughty-Cal should have been a distant but happy memory as we looked forward to new adventures on the roads of the UK and Europe. Best laid plans and all that, hey?

Thinking that the boat was sold we had stripped everything off of her only keeping the boating essentials just in case we came back to boating one day. Of course this has meant we have had to buy all new stuff for her again. New bedding, new cutlery, new glassware, new plates, new pots, new pans. The list has been seemingly endless. We still keep remembering little odds and sods of things that we have forgotten about that we will need.

In a way it is nice to be starting afresh. Everything is clean and tidy and after a years break from boating we are all starting afresh again. We can now start planning some trips away again. Where will we head? I don't think even we know the answer to that one yet!

On the List

Now that we have Naughty-Cal back in the water after almost a year ashore we have a small list of little jobs that need sorting out. Nothing major, all little odds and sods of jobs really but stuff that needs sorting out before we start to plan any trips away. So far the list includes:

• Fixing the diesel heating. We are waiting for the spare parts to arrive for this.
• Fixing one of the burners on the hob. This has mysteriously broken but tracking down spare parts is proving tricky as the hob is now obsolete
• Buying a fitting an adapter cable for the transducer to the sonar module. Again sourcing the right cable is proving difficult.
• Installing new bulbs in the white nav lights. These have given up the ghost in the last year.
• Rewiring the VHF aerial as the quick release connection has parted company with the cable. 
• Checking the fuel filters. These were freshly changed before the boat came out of the water but now that we have run for a few hours we want to check them for dirt and debris that might indicate issues with the fuel.
• Change the impellor. This has been damaged due to the pump not self priming when the boat was relaunched.

As you can see there is nothing major on the list but we would like to get some jobs crossed off before we can go anywhere too far.

A Change of Plan

Well it would seem that circumstances have dictated we have had a change of plans and we will now be keeping Naughty-Cal for a while longer.

The sale fell through due to Coronavirus so we thought it is sometimes better the devil you know. 

We are now working through a list of small jobs to get her back up to top notch condition again but she seems none the worse for almost a year ashore.

Now we just need to be able to stay overnight onboard.