Still Here

I haven’t moved from Uxbridge, in fact my phone shows my location as Iver, but either way (no pun intended) I decided to stay until Monday at least, my 14 days will be up on Tuesday and then to comply with the rules I have to move, so as long as the weather is ok, I will move on after the weekend.

It is bitterly cold outside so I haven’t even ventured out for the last couple of days, enjoying the Kindle and the quiet but I get bored quite easily, before I bought Quinquireme I obviously looked it over quite a bit and when I did that the area in the bow (front) where the cold water tank is located (forpeak)was bone dry, but when it was surveyed there was about 12mm of water in there, that was one of the few items that had to be rectified, but the man at Galleon Marine could not find any reason for the water being in there, no leaks, or other obvious problems, he said he dried it out and that was that, that has been playing on my mind from time to time.

One of the other issues I thought need looking at was the fact that there was no ready access to the main structure’s bilge area, (that’s all of the area beneath the internal flooring) and I thought if there ever is a leak on the plumbing or whatever I would need to be able to gain access to get the water out, so this morning I cut a small access hole in the floor of one the cupboards at the stern (back) of the boat. I expected to find water in there, condensation would drain down to there, there was a leak on one of the radiator valves which I fixed when I found it, and also the porthole that was leaking when it rained would have allowed water to drain into the bilge, so I wasn’t surprised that it was rather wet, in fact I have removed 5 or 6 large bucketfuls which is probably about 50 to 60 litres, but this has I think explained the mystery of the water in the forepeak, normally a narrowboat sits in the water slightly lower at the stern than the bow so all the water in the bilge would gather at the stern, but when the boat was surveyed it was in a dry dock and would have sat level allowing the water to find a natural level and show up in the forepeak, that’s my theory anyway!

In the absence of anything exciting to post I thought I would put up these piccy’s, it’s probably about 2 degrees outside, in the cabin it is currently 26 thanks to this.

This is where the solo boater eats his meals.

And here is one of my neighbours, we had a little chat, as he ate some of my bread, I took the picture from the side hatch.

Have a good weekend all.