05/07/2008

Been ultra-busy again ……...

Sorry, but been ultra-busy this last month, so no blogging. We did achieve something boaty over the last couple of weeks though – the Francis Searchlight we bought way back in March 2008 has been taken to bits, the grey enamel paint stripped off (using lashings of Nitromorse), all this beautiful brass exposed, polished, lacquered, put back together again and it is now mounted to our cratch using a custom made brass base. Nice init?

For those out there that might want to acquire one of these searchlights and are none too keen on the standard Francis base, a drawing of our brass base is available on request. The hole at the bottom is for mounting a 20mm bullet camera.

Beware of gettng a detached retina, should you happen to encounter us ‘bow on’ in a tunnel somewhere!

20/05/2008

Back from our travels……...

We have just returned from our travels – not on the canals this time, but a trip to Turkey to attend a wedding. We spotted this little beauty in the harbour at Kalkan and I was rapidly plunged in to ‘fantasy mode’. Just think - a year’s worth of cruising the Mediterranian and then cruising to other destinations in one of these. Bump, bash, crash and I am back to reality. I reckon that we could expect a hefty six figure price tag and, no matter how many different ways you look at it, only a lottery win would bring about a ‘BELLE II’ in this form. Anyway, I tell myelf, she would not fit the locks on the Trent & Mersey.

BELLE behaved herself whilst we were away. We took the precaution of shutting down almost everything before we departed. The gas, diesel and water supplies were isolated, as were all of the electrical sub-systems except the bilge pump. I did however have a few worrying thoughts about the Johnson ‘solid state’ water level sensor used on our Johnson bilge pump whilst we were away. This was because we have had two of these sensors pack up already, i.e. the one previously fitted to the bilge pump and another similar water level sensor used on the Johnson shower pump.

The water level sensor used on the bilge pump failed in such a way that the pump was left running continuously. On that occasion, we could hear it running and we shut it down before the bilge pump was left running dry for long enough to damage the pump.

The one that failed on the shower pump did so whilst we were out and about. Subsequent investigation (after commencing a shower and then finding out the hard way that the water was not draining) revealed a hole in the side of the sensor. This was due to overheating of an underlying component – the heat generated by said component had melted the case. On this occasion, water had not entered the electronic workings of the sensor, caused a short circuit and tripped the MCB. The root cause of the problem was that the waste pipe had blocked and the pump had been doing its best for hours to pump against this blockage. That’s probably why the component in the sensor overheated. Begs the question – is the Johnson solid state water level sensor design flawed and not properly matched to the rating of the Johnson pump and/or the duties to be expected in a typical bilge pump / shower application?

16/05/2008

Final squatter update……...

Well, that’s it – now there are none. Whatever it was that saw off the other ducklings has now seen off the last one. Despite keeping an eye on things, we do not know what it was that caused their demise. Foxes, rats, stoats, crows, pike, etc.; there are plenty of potential predators and there is of course the cold and the water. 15 > 1 in just over a week is one hell of a mortality rate though. Maybe Ma + Pa will have another go this year – we shall see. Glad I’m not a duck!

08/05/2008

Squatter update……...

Up until 48 hours ago, all was fine in the land of ducks. Then, having started with fifteen eggs, Mum revealed eight newly hatched youngsters and four un-hatched eggs. Where the rest went is anybody’s guess. Still, on the positive side, eight had survived. But (and there is always a but...) seven of the eight perished overnight last night and now she has just the one.

It was probably exposure, because a couple of bodies have been seen floating in the cut.

As I type, Mum is squatting on the bank in front of our bow and junior is squatting just below her on a ledge I have made inside a tyre fender on our Armco.

Fingers crossed this one will pull through.

09/04/2008

Squatter update………….

A snowfall is definitely a plus if you are a white duck trying hard to blend into your surroundings. This picture was taken Sunday morning, after we had more or less come to terms with the idea that riding down to Brands Hatch was a non-starter. British Superbike 2008 was scheduled to start and we were really keen to go and see it do so. As things turned out, we soon learned that the races that day were abandoned. The duck did not seem to mind one bit about the snow, or for that matter; British Superbike.

The egg count is now up to fifteen, so she has been busy these last few days.

04/04/2008

We now have a squatter………….

We woke up a couple of days back and spotted a squatting duck peering out from between some of our plant pots. Nothing unusual we thought at first glance, but closer inspection later that same day (after said squatter had cleared off for a while) revealed that we have just acquired 10 eggs as well. Of all the places to pick to dump a nest load of eggs we thought! There is very little camouflage from passing boaters and dogs, et al. Still, we assume that Mum knows what she is doing and we are trying hard not to disturb her as we come and go, but it’s a tough call.

Since this picture was taken another egg has appeared. Let’s hope that Mum follows through and succeeds in raising all of her potential offspring before the rats and other predators wreak havoc. We shall see – we will post an update now and again, but you can forget the ‘Duck Cam’ because we do not have enough bandwidth for that sort of thing at the moment.

We are curious as to whether duck eggs require little heat during incubation? Mum on this occasion seems to spend very little time sitting on her eggs, confining the time that she does sit to mid-evening through to around breakfast time. Is this normal we are wondering?

If there are any ‘experts’ out there that know the usual pattern, then maybe they can drop us a line? Meanwhile, Stelle’s vigil will continue and I can expect what will seem like countless nights of little sleep. It’s just like having kids again! If you see anybody pacing up and down Hunts Lock mooring over the next few weeks looking fraught and somewhat like an expectant father, more likely than not it will be me.

They don’t mention this sort of thing on Waterworld!

16/03/2008

It’s only a diddy bit of plastic from the top of a container, but………….

We were walking near BELLE on Friday when we spotted one of the local Mallards struggling like hell to remove its newly acquired orange plastic ‘necklace’ – see picture. This is an illustration because unfortunately we did not have a camera with us at the time, but you will get the idea, we feel sure. Somehow this fella had managed to insert his head through this necklace in such a way that it had passed between his top and bottom beak and then around the back of his head. Like most necklaces, especially when you only have webbed feet available to work with, it was proving a tad difficult for him to remove it without some assistance. Try as we did to get him close enough to us to allow us to help him out, he was having none of it.

Needless to say we have been ‘Mallard spotting’ for most of this weekend, just waiting for an opportunity to pounce on him so that we could effect the required assistance. Well, that opportunity presented itself this morning and, with thanks to Jane and Ray from NB. No Direction and their box of cornflakes and side cutters, we managed to lure him close enough to us for us to pounce. Much to his surprise (and ours) we managed to pin him down long enough for us to snip off his necklace. Well, you should have seen his neck extend – a welcome relief. He was soaked because he could not attend to his hourly DIY waterproofing regime and he had clearly lost some weight over the last couple of days, probably not being able to eat a thing. For sure, without human intervention, he would have suffered a slow and painful death.

My next point being of course – it was human intervention that got him in this predicament in the first place. Unfortunately, I doubt that the complete arse that discarded this diddy bit of plastic will read this BLOG!

01/03/2008

Elbow grease required………….

The bow light that came with BELLE, whilst made from brass and about the right size / shape / location, is a bit ‘lightweight’. Furthermore, it is based on a ‘sealed beam unit’. This sealed beam unit has two filaments, well it did have – one blew last year whilst we were out and about on one of our cruises and the other blew about a week ago whilst we were up the cut getting our weekly water top up. We are now compelled to do something about getting it sorted. We had also contemplated retro-fitting a white LED replacement bulb unit, not because it will consume much less power, moreover because of the practical ‘sharp’ white light that LED’s produce. Being based on a sealed beam unit, this bow light is not suitable.

The vast majority of bow light designs we have seen in the chandlers are also a bit ‘lightweight’ and many are also based on a sealed beam unit and they typically cost up to about £100 a time in brass and/or chrome. Those that may be obtained from the automotive and commercial vehicle equipment suppliers just do not look the part. We had a rummage on t’Internet and came across several Francis Searchlight products. These are much more robust and they really do look the part. We sent an enquiry to Francis and learned how much we would have to pay them for a new 7” diameter brass searchlight – cough, splutter, gasp, when they revealed a whopping “£475”. That does include a bulb though! Blimey, we thought, they are avin a larf. For that price, we would expect gold plating, delivery, full installation and maintenance for the next 20 years at least!

After a bit more Internet searching and a telephone call, we have learned that Moorfield Specialist Vehicles has a variety of searchlights for us to take a closer look at. A short journey and £160 later we have this little beauty, which is identical to the one that Francis quoted, just that it currently sports a grey paint job on top of the solid brass construction. The bulb mounting will accept an LED replacement and the distance between the bulb and the reflector is adjustable from the outside, allowing you to generate a sharp beam of light or flood light. The mounting is pan and tilt. Even taking into account the need to buy a tin of paint stripper, yet another tube of Autosol and subsequently apply some elbow grease, this represents a far better deal. Now then, about that elbow grease – any volunteers?

PS. We have also updated our email contact information.

Our solar panels and a few other associated bits have also arrived – write up on here soon.

03/02/2008

Oh my Gaaaaawwwwwwwwddd !!!!!! They’re back!

They announced their arrival on the side of BELLE today in that characteristic BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG , BANG “hhhheeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrsss Johnny ” kind of way.

Guess we had better start getting used to a repeat performance of 2007, e.g. being almost dragged off the bow, food demanded every 30 minutes or so and even more of our paint stripped off. Who needs to worry about a bashing on the Armco, when these guys are around?

Wonderful.

02/02/2008

Stroll on Springtime………….

Yes, that’s what we need; more sunshine and an outside temperature warm enough for shirt sleeves, then we can put these to good use. Here you can see some of Gary’s and Mark’s (Sandhills) recent handywork on our bow. Workmanship is first class and construction is solid as a rock.

The LH image shows the folding table lowered into position and soft pads fitted to all of the seats / lockers. The centre image shows the table folded and stowed – the table side leaves fold over then the whole lot hinges from the bottom and is locked at the top against the cratch plank. The RH image shows the soft seat pads removed to expose the lockers – there are two side lockers that extend from the front bulkhead to the removable gunwales and a third locker in the middle. They can all be easily separated and rearranged to make way for my bike. All of the lockers have large grooved / piano hinged top covers and, like the folding table, are heavily varnished. The soft seat pads are covered in cratch material so as to provide a reasonable degree of weatherproofing. The ‘cherry on the cake’ is the marquetry in the table top and locker side walls to match that used inside BELLE.

A cracking job of work. You can be sure that the lockers are now full up and that the G+T’s are primed and at the ready. Stroll on Springtime. Well it’s a tough way of life, but somebody has to do it!

30/01/2008

Harnessing the sun………….

We can’t wait any longer for Gordon and his colleagues to quit faffing around when it comes to dropping the tax on renewable energy solutions. So, we have stumped up a stack of cash for a couple of these Kyocera Polycrystalline Photovoltaic Modules (that’s solar panels to the likes of you and me). They should be delivered, along with a 30 Amp controller / regulator, next week. If things go according to plan, we will have them installed within the next few weeks and then we are fully tooled up for stuffing some of that energy ‘freely’ available from the sun into our domestic batteries.

Each panel is rated 130w max, 17.6v, 7.59A. The cost of the panels, etc. will eventually be balanced by savings on engine wear and tear and diesel and so on. I have not tried to do any clever sums to estimate how long it will take to realise the payback - I shall wait until we have evaluated their performance for a few weeks on BELLE and then have a go. That way we take into account the average light levels where we are moored, etc. I do however expect some significant savings in due course; otherwise you can be sure that the cash would have stayed in the bank!

Watch this space.

14/01/2008

An update on the UltraLED performance…………….

We are still very pleased with the performance of the UltraLED 12v LED units we purchased to serve as replacements for all of the 20w Halogen spots originally fitted to BELLE. To date, we have only suffered two failures out of a total of 24 – said failures occurred very soon after we made a bulk purchase in May 2007. Having said this, we have found it necessary recently to re-glue the array of LED’s back into the reflector / shell on two units. One can only assume that the adhesive used originally was poorly applied. No big deal really – easily sorted with a blob or two of glue. We would still recommend this product to those seeking to reduce their electrical power consumption – SCORE 9 / 10 for UltraLED.

Another matter – Mastervolt MICC Unit performance…………….

We would be interested to hear from anybody that has encountered any issues with their Mastervolt Mass Inverter Charge Control (MICC) unit, particularly when used in conjunction with a Mastervolt Charge Combi sine wave inverter / charger. We have a problem with this set up on BELLE that Mastervolt has been trying to fix for nearly a year now! - SCORE 0 / 10 for Mastervolt. There will be more information about their performance in this respect uploaded to this BLOG soon.

Basically, the MICC “BATTERY STATUS” function tells lies. The MICC is supposed to monitor all current drawn from the batteries when there is a demand and all current put back in during charging in such a way that the user has a reliable indication of how much energy there is available within the batteries as a percentage of the design capacity. All is fine when reset, but then the BATTERY STATUS (%) reading systematically reduces during each charge - discharge cycle, so much so that, after a few days, the batteries are fully charged (tests have confirmed this) but the status reading has drifted / fallen by around 5%. This discrepancy just gets bigger as the number of days / charge-discharge cycles increases – in other words, it’s bloody useless. Does this sound familiar to anybody out there?

Taken to its logical conclusion, we cannot reliably monitor our battery status using this Mastervolt product and therefore we cannot reliably cycle our batteries within the recommended range of about 85% to 50%, this being conducive to a reasonable overall battery life. I am wondering; would Mastervolt will be willing to stump up for a battery bank replacement if our batteries degrade prematurely?

13/01/2008

A nifty bit of Freeview decoding…………….

Check this out – available from TVonics for £49-99 inc. P/P.

We bought one of these Freeview decoders last week – now installed neatly under the gunwale in our bedroom and feeding Freeview to our flip-down TV. We had been looking around for ages for a small device with RF connections IN and OUT so that all we need to do is connect it between the TV and the existing aerial. All of the other devices we have seen to date, the ones that are small enough to fit under the gunwale that is, use a SCART format – our flip-down TV does not have a SCART socket.

This particular device comes complete with a hand held remote control and a power supply (230v.ac). Total power consumption is 5w when in use and about 1.5w when on standby – basically, bugger all.

We saw something very similar in the ALDI sales brochure a few weeks back and we made a point of being more or less on their doorstep ready for when they opened to the masses. Unfortunately, they never found their way into the ALDI shops for some reason or other and no reason offered up by the staff for why not. They were to be marketed under the ‘Tevion’ trading name that ALDI uses for some of its electronics goods and, if memory serves, for sale at about £35. No matter, we are sorted now.

Quality appears OK and there is a label on the back indicating that the device has been made by Sony. Now all we need is a marked improvement in TV programme content!

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