Saturday 1st March 2014
Today we left the marina after nearly 4 months. We have really enjoyed being in the city for the Winter. Things didn’t go exactly according to plan this morning (when do they ever with us?) and the first thing which happened (or rather didn’t happen) was the engine wouldn’t start!
After several attempts to start it and some Anglo Saxon expressions Ken decided he thought it was the starter motor and called RCR. As usual they delivered a very good service with a nice young man (adorned with some interesting tattoos and various bits of metalwork) coming along about 2 hours later.
He quickly diagnosed the problem as a dead starter battery. It was showing a good charge but quickly dropped as soon as a load was put on it, not having enough power to engage the starter motor. As he didn’t have a new one with him he swapped the dead battery for our bow thruster battery and we were on our way about 12-30pm.
We had made arrangements to go down to Gloucester Marine Services at Hempsted to have a new regulator fitted on our gas system. We didn’t have to be there until 2pm so we weren’t late. When we arrived we had to breast up to the boat which they had just refloated from under the bridge last week (see photos). It looks a sorry sight I can tell you.
Just after we arrived the gas man put in an appearance, took one look at the part the chap at the boat yard had ordered and said it wasn’t all there! By this time the boat yard had closed (being Saturday afternoon) so he couldn’t speak to the chap who had ordered it. We aren’t sure when we’re getting it done now! There is a boat in the dry dock and they were also expecting to get a job done by this same gas man but their part hadn’t turned up all! Not very encouraging as on Tuesday they are supposed to be fitting our new inverter!
After this debacle we turned round and were going to go back to Gloucester but the bridge keeper was no where to be seen so we moored up and went to the pub!
