Sunday 7th April

Sunday 7th April

Well we have had a couple of weeks without anything being done to Destiny, here's one reason:

The other reason was also the weather, the weekend before last was so windy that it was simply foolhardy to even try to venture out onto the cut.  We didn't even stay over on her as there was no chance of getting much sleep.  We are relatively sheltered on our mooring but the fenders were making an awful racket and you felt you were out at sea, the best course of action was to head for the safety of home.

Last weekend was a better weekend altogether even if it was bitterly cold and the canal was frozen every morning.  The ice even took a sliver of anti foul off the hull but that will have to wait till she next comes out of the water to be rectified.

We took her out of the marina for a 'cobweb cruise' as it were, not expecting to stay out due to the cold forecast, but it was just as well as we had an alternator failure about 40 minutes in.

Not a big job and we were glad it happened early in the season as it means there's less to go wrong when we are at full flow.

Alternator has been away and repaired but there is now another 'minor fault' with either of these two beauties:

Not a major issue but I've ordered both just in case as if one has failed there's a good chance the other will follow suit.  Not bad after 38 years.

Still the time in the marina gave me a chance to do a couple of minor jobs, namely the cockpit upper lighting, another 25 minute job that had people believing I had Tourettes.

But the finished article looks good and is very effective in the dark.

The cables were inserted through the aluminium bars and plugged at the bottom using a 12v caravan socket, allowing the canopy to be lowered.  If I'd left another 2 inches of cable at the bottom I could have left them plugged in, but hindsight is a wonderful thing!

I need a couple more on the rear bars but that can be done another day, when I get bored.

The steering wheel had a rough looking chrome centre boss so we had it engraved to be put back on, only trouble is the engraver put the D on the wrong way round, so I had to find another centre boss, not easy I can tell you but here is the finished article.

And to top it all we managed to get a sail in yesterday as the weather was no less than fantastic.

Dare I say spring is finally here???

New fresh water pump fitted today as the old one didn't survive winter, but no one wants pictures of that!

So there we have it, roll on the warm weather so the varnishing can be started and some more of the little exterior jobs can be done.

Loads more to come as there's loads more jobs to do.