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When you have a continual cruising narrowboat license, you can moor up at any spot on the canal for two weeks, but then you have to move on and find a new spot. Son is busy trying to find a new job and having doctors' appointments, having had an operation on his toe, so he has been staying with Daughter in their house. So this meant that the boat had been unoccupied for two weeks, after coming out of the boatyard.
Moving day arrives, and we tool up to move the boat. Everything's good, we find a new mooring with no problem. Son puts back most of the fabrics that had to be taken away because of being moldy. We're all feeling quite accomplished and positive about the boat's new start... and I look in the engine bay and say, "There's a lot of water in here, isn't there?"
Swooping rush of existential dread and despair.
We all huddle around the engine bay. Yep, there is water in there right up to the base of the engine.
Stupid us, did we leave the bilge pump switched off? Has it filled up over the fortnight by dripping through the propeller shaft with no bilge pump switched on to pump it back out again?
But no. We try to pump it out and it turns out the bilge pump is not working at all. It's not even wired up!
Panic. The boat's going to fill up with water and sink, and there's nothing we can do about it. Why did the boatyard leave it like this? What are we going to do?
Fortunately DH is an engineer. Engineers are the people who make things work, and sure enough, he sticks his arm in the water, fishes around for any loose wires and discovers the ends of the bilge pump wires. Which socket does this wire go in, in the control panel? Who knows? There are two of them, so he chooses one.
This makes the bilge pump work on manual, so we manually pump out the enormous amount of water around the engine. But it does not make the pump work on auto - so someone has to be there to operate the pump to stop this from happening again.
Sadly by this time it is so cold we feel we're in a movie about doomed explorers in the Arctic, and son has to be back for an interview. So we call it a day and go home, fairly sure that if it took the boat a fortnight to fill up to that level, it'll be fine if we go back next weekend with tools to try to fix the pump.
Next weekend it's raining hard, but we go down as planned and DH (who has googled the wiring diagram in the meantime) fixes the bilge pump. We pump another 50 litres of water out of the engine bay, and then try to get the rest out with a mop and bucket.
Since we're there, we decide to move the boat to a new mooring. Son is heading very slowly up the Grand Union canal with the aim of eventually getting onto the Great Ouse navigation - which will put the boat much closer to where the rest of the family live. All the painting and other repairs should go much easier when we don't have to drive so far to get to it.
On the route to the new mooring, the canal goes under a bridge on a slight bend, so you can't see if anything is coming from the other side. Son tries to honk the horn which is the canal version of sticking the turn signal on so people know you're coming.
The horn doesn't work.
We moor up. We try the horn again - nothing. We try the headlight, because horn and headlight are on the same wiring. Headlight doesn't work either.
The first day we were out on the boat, we went through a tunnel that took half an hour to pass through. If you're prepared to be impolite and risk a head on collision under a bridge, you can do without the horn, but you can't do without the headlight.
Luckily we have a heroic engineer on board, and DH manages to get the wires fixed so the light works again. Horns however still sound like a gnat's fart, and it seems like they're just very old and busted. (Almost everything on the boat is very old and busted.)
This time, because I knew we would be faffing about for a long time, I had lit the stove. So the living room is nice and warm and the kettle is sitting on top of the stove, steaming nicely.
There is a little fan which sits on top of the stove and which is supposed to turn when it gets hot, in order to distribute the warm air better throughout the boat. But it too is old and busted. That goes on the list for things to replace.
Still, it's nice to sit on the boat in the warmth, with a cup of tea, listening to the reassuring sound of the bilge pump coming on in automatic mode, and thinking "we are making progress."
The progress is mending things that hadn't been broken before we took them into the boatyard. But it's still improvement, and it deserves celebrating.
A week later (last Saturday) we go back to move it again, and notice that - without consulting us first (we would have told them not to) the boatyard has put back the wiring that we removed because it was mains wiring cable-tied to the gas pipe.
(I didn't mention the whole debacle we had before the boat went into the boatyard, where Son tried to cook his dinner using the oven and smelled a gas leak. Then we got the gas man to come out, and he had a quietly contained screaming fit over how the electric wires ran along the leaking gas pipe, and how it was 100% against regulations and also could explode the boat and kill anyone on board.)
We mutter imprecations under our breath and get the screwdrivers out to get rid of the wiring a second time. In the process of which we discover the boatyard has wired up the electric sockets really badly - one has live and neutral reversed. A second has a loose live wire.
Son has a minor breakdown, and who can blame him? This has been going on since July 2022, leaving him homeless and costing him his job, not to mention the thousands of pounds charged by the boatyard.
At least the summer is coming, and there should be dry days ahead where we will be able to get some of the rust off and paint the boat to protect it from that. But it does seem like we have got ourselves quite a project, and who knows what other problems it might throw up, the more we look at it?
(Son and I also managed to drop a cup of tea on his foot and my hand and burn ourselves. That was just the cherry on the cake.)
Poor Drum. I don't believe it's the boat's fault. It's been neglected. But we will save it in the end.
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Date: 2023-03-16 01:43 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2023-03-17 09:15 am (UTC)From:I've heard so many people wistfully thinking that it must be such a lovely, low stress lifestyle. Unfortunately, that really doesn't seem to be the case, so I think you're wise :)
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Date: 2023-03-16 05:31 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2023-03-17 09:24 am (UTC)From:Thanks! I think that it is slowly getting better. The boatyard did at least repair several holes in the hull and also an enormous one in the roof, so that's something! Also they replaced the old worn out batteries, and DH fixed the alternator, so it now isn't in danger of having no electricity at all. (When Son first bought it there was barely enough electricity to keep the bilge pump running and start the engine, and now he can at least charge phones and use the shower.) It's just sometimes hard to see the improvements over the things that still need to be done.
I do think we're getting there, though :) (Fingers crossed.) Thank you!
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Date: 2023-03-17 04:01 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2023-03-17 09:28 am (UTC)From:Thank you! Yes, we have had multiple issues with the boat since Son bought it back in July 2022, although in those days it was mostly a case of having barely any electricity and also the gas leak. The electricity is mostly solved, and he can get round not having an oven by using a couple of camping gas stoves as burners until we can get that fixed. And the boatyard did at least weld up several holes in the hull, so it's all a lot more livable than it was.
The aim is for it to be in full working order, him living aboard and with some means of supporting himself by the end of the year, so it's not time to panic just yet :)
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Date: 2023-03-18 02:16 am (UTC)From:And I think you're very right that it will be much easier in the summer when it's not miserably cold to have to get things done!
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Date: 2023-03-17 09:40 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2023-03-17 09:58 am (UTC)From:Yes! Son is currently handling all that. (With the back up of Daughter's mother-in-law and DH's brother who are both lawyers.) I think everyone knew that it could not be left to me because I don't have the necessary spine. I provide the snacks and moral support :)
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Date: 2023-03-17 02:52 pm (UTC)From:These things are much easier with a lawyer or two in the family!
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Date: 2023-03-17 09:48 am (UTC)From:Stan Rogers was a great singer and song-writer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzXR8Q1Ze2E
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Date: 2023-03-17 10:10 am (UTC)From:Oh rotfl, yes, I know exactly how he feels :) At least it makes it sound like a mythical hero journey instead of ... whatever mess it is now :) Thank you!
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Date: 2023-03-17 02:29 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2023-03-17 10:52 pm (UTC)From:It really doesn't! Although I think that a certain amount of constant maintenance is to be expected with any boat, (As with a car.) It'll be good if we can get back to that sort of level where only one thing needs to be done at a time. Thank you :)