Friday 15 May 2015

Of Small Triumphs!

As I was contemplating the cheese chiller yesterday in LiDL I was tapped on the shoulder.  I turned and there was the engineer.  Of course it was a delight to see him, specially since he has been so unwell.  He said he had been back in hospital since our last exchange of messages and came home the day before yesterday.  This virus won't leave him alone and now others on the farm have gone down with it too.  His boss has been trying to shake it off for the past nine weeks.  This virulent affliction would, apparently, have become pneumonia, or pleurisy, or some other foul lung-clogging condition had it not been for the "water tablets".  Adam's ale scores again or is that not how water tablets work?

He mentioned the boat and I rehearsed my latest woes.  "I'll be round in the morning," he said, "ten o'clock suit you?"  Of course, ten o'clock would suit me, specially since it was a "work at home" day although I really didn't want to be responsible for making him feel ill again, or more ill than he felt in the supermarket.

Let these wires that have been joined together in continuity
let no man or engine vibration put asunder.
Today, at ten o'clock, he arrived.  I lifted the board that covered the engine and he saw the problem immediately.  At some point he had extended a red wire with a length of yellow wire.  I vaguely remembered something of the sort happening now he mentioned it and it was pretty obvious that the two wires had come apart, no doubt rent asunder by the vibration of the engine.  I wouldn't have noticed when I last used the boat because the starter would not have been needed once the engine had started.  It must have happened when I was practising  reversing manoeuvres in the wind and picking rubbish out of the river on the opposite side.  I had been fed up with looking at the accumulation of plastic jetsam in the reeds and decided to do something about it during that brief window when I thought the boat was working properly.  Once connected the starter coughed into action on demand.  That is all I was hoping for.  The fibre washers I bought to try and deal with the leak in the stopcock in the fuel pipe were the wrong size so he'll bring his box of washers down next time he comes.  He didn't want to stay long, because he had to go to the surgery and give a blood sample and he didn't want to pass on the virus, which he thought must still be active since the American farm labourer had just caught it.  He only stayed for another hour to tell me about a bunch of rugby players from his village who had decided he was going to be the designated driver to get them to a dinner.  He tells a good tale, but it is his tale to tell so I shan't include it here.  Instead here are some other photographs of my boat's engine.

This one clearly shows the new spill rail we put on a few months ago and some other wiggly bits of tube attached to useful engine bits.  Also there are more red wires while in the background you can see the yellow wire.




This one shows one of the fuel leaks I failed to stop last Sunday.  It's not the worst one by any means, but it will need to be sorted.  I've tightened the nut as much as seems prudent.  Will it be enough or will action of a different order be required?

The day has turned out quite nicely and the sun is shining brilliantly.  Time to get some bread baking and get on with a coat of primer on the most recently discovered patches of rust I have been treating.

Then more song practice I think.  Today is the last day of my sixth decade.

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