Friday 7th June
We were up bright and early today to turn round, get water and re-moor before Nigel came to do our BSC inspection.On our way back from the winding hole we passed Jeff and Jill (Aventgotone) who are on their way to Lancaster. It will probably be another 2 years until we see them again.
Nigel arrived promptly and everything was going swimmingly with the test, there were a couple of things we needed to do, like buy another fire extinguisher for example, but nothing serious, until he tried to test our gas system.
He was unable to locate the gas test point. He looked in all the usual places where they normally are and decided we just don’t have one! I phoned our wonderful boat builder to ask him where it was. He suggested all the places we had already looked. Nigel told him there wasn’t one and that, in the course of his search, he had also discovered we hadn’t got a gas isolation tap where the rigid copper pipe meets the flexible pipe under the wall mounted oven.
Mark babbled on something about it being on our original gas certificate but we haven’t got our original gas certificate. In any case, I wondered, how had they tested the gas in the first place when the boat was built with no gas test point! He babbled on another load of rubbish about how it may be behind the oven. I said why on earth would they put it behind a wall mounted oven when it had to be accessible for the BSC. In the end he admitted he couldn’t remember where it was. Obviously you wouldn’t remember something you had never done!
I realised I was getting nowhere and asked him if he could come and fit the test point and the isolation tap. He said he could but he had just got back from holiday and I would have to phone back on Monday and he may be able to do it later next week etc, etc so I got quite riled and said I would get someone else to do it, although I don’t see why we should have to pay for work that he should have already done.
So I phoned Ant Reed, he has been along here handing out his business cards several times since we have been here (we’ve got 3) so he must be keen to get work. He came this afternoon and had a look and is going to do the job on Monday. We are going to phone him Sunday night and tell him where we are, could be Newbold, Hillmorton or Braunston because we have been here long enough already.
When the work has been done we will have to phone Nigel and arrange for a re-test. It’s a good job we had it done with plenty of time before the old certificate runs out because it may be some time before we and Nigel are in close proximity again. It’s all very inconvenient.
After all this we needed a drink of course so we went and sat outside the Greyhound for a while. It was packed again due to the fantastic weather.
Tomorrow we are finally off in the general direction of ……. South.
