Tuesday, December 3, 2013

A day in Birmingham

We spent the day in Birmingham today on foot for a change, but inevitably found ourselves walking along the canal. Here are a few pictures taken on the Birmingham Canal main line and the Birminham and Fazeley Canal.

Stunning architecture and amazing feats of Industrial Revolution, the mind truly boggles at times at the foresight and brilliance of Brindley and the sheer strength, guts and bravery of the navigators bless em.








 



Sunday, December 1, 2013

Getting ready for our first winter on Bunbury

The winter has soon come around, well Autumn at least! We are back on Bunbury and getting nher ready for the colder weather, the new heating system is superb, being a Webasto, the Thermo Top C, is a 5kw burner and drives 4 radiators throughout the boat providing plenty of warmth and seems relatively cheap to run. Figures given quote 0.53 litres to 0.68 litres per hour of use, which seems a good return to us.

We have been trying to cure small leaks on the two forward hatches (she has 5), I noticed from pictures gained from the broker's website (Venetian Marina) that last winter she had tarps spread over these hatches, so we tried to re-create the same. I bought two light tarps 6'X 4' and with a piece of 4 x 2 split down the middle and an old hoe handle we were ready on our master design. We sewed the wood at the bottom of the tarp with rot free garden twine and the dowel at the other end, attached 5 snap clips to both tarps with 2mm polypropylene rope and it only took 1.5 hours. Before laying the tarps on the roof I applied fresh, self adhesive foam insulation to the hatches and a little splash of Captain Tolleys Creeping Crack cure (yes honestly) and so we hope we are ready for winter!

Today was a lovely clear sunny day so we decided to take a walk along the Trent and Mersey just outside our Marina, so quiet and peaceful, no traffic and very pleasant.

Here are a few pictures of the work carried out and our walk.