Preparations for drydocking.

Friday 6th June,

Another horrible journey up from Kent, ok until the M1 just after junction 13 where the traffic got slower and slower till eventually everybody came to a standstill. Then the inevitable fire engines and police cars came whizzing up the hard shoulder so everybody switched the engines off, got out and wandered around stretching their legs. After about 45 mins there were signs of movement further up the road, and gradually the traffic got moving again.

About 2 miles further on I passed the scene of the accident. I kept my eyes firmly on the road ahead, (dont want to add to the accident statistics) but i was aware of a substantial amount of wreckage around an articulated lorry that seemed to have had the whole of one side 'peeled' open!

I got into Lichfield around 2.30 in the afternoon so the trip at that point had taken 4 hours, a quick stop at Morrisons to pick up some supplies and grab a bite to eat and then on to Kings Bromley marina.

Isn't it amazing how quickly cobwebs form! The spiders had had a field day with no-one to disturb them and there were loads of webs all over the outside of Bracken!

Gas on, fridge on, supplies stowed away. Windows opened, front doors opened to let the breeze blow through as it was quite stuffy, (Friday was quite a hot day).

I spent the evening at G & Jaqs, and ended up staying the night there too as Bro and I had some shopping to do Saturday.

Saturday 7th June

There was such a noisy storm in the early hours, thunder, lightning and rain!After catching up on a few household chores Graham and I drove over to the boat and discussed the intended jobs. One of the important jobs is to fit a bilge pump. What no bilge pump! I hear you cry?.... No, unfortunately, the previous owner had not thought it necessary to fit one. Anyway i now have the needed items so thats a job to do whilst Bracken is out of the water. (Graham had the unenviable task of baling out several gallons of rainwater a few weeks ago after some pretty heavy downpours!.... Bilge pump needed)!

Another intended job is to hinge the engine hatch cover so it can be raised and lowered more easily.

At present the cover is a large sheet of 4mm steel which measures just less than a square metre, and is therefore quite heavy and awkward to open and close being unattached on all 4 sides. You get some idea in the following picture.

So the plan is to hinge it along the back edge so that when its raised it will then lean against the stern rail under the tiller arm. Well that's the plan anyway.

(the boxes are not yet bolted in place, that's another job).

So off we trotted to the local DIY store to look at hinges and stainless bolts and nuts etc.. etc..

Whilst I'm catching up with this blog here's a couple of pictures of the new fuel filter and water separator assembly, I forgot to include them in the last posting.

Standard filter refill, easy to obtain spares.

The weather wasn't conducive to working outside, rain and more rain so we drove down to Fradley and had a look at where we're bringing the boat to tomorrow for drydocking. 

Whilst at Fradley we popped in to Kingfisher cafe and each had a bowl of beef and veg stew and very nice it was too!

Then, back to Grahams garage/workshop to make some alterations to the hinges and to cut some bolts to length ready for fitting hopefully this week.