Making Plans for 2017

Making Plans for 2017

December 2016 (with  less then 2 hours to go till its 2017)

With 2016 a near wash out from a boating perspective it has been a huge relief to start to plan out our 2017 route.

For years there has been an irritating and time consuming  fly in the ointment of my life - the job!  It has has had to stand front and square in my plans and everything else had to work around it.

Of course, 2016 included a six month sabbatical and that gave me a tantalising taste of things to come, but then reality returned with a vengence as I managed the transition back to the weekly grind in November. Having reflected on our priorities we have decided that there is enough in the pension pot to support us so, from mid April, I will say goodbye to my employer of 37 years.

But let me be clear - I AM NOT RETIRING!  I cant even guess how many people have said I am too young to retire, and in a way they are right. I cant sit around all day reading the modern equivalent of the paper, I need to be active. So, after my non retirement I will be busy all summer trading The Jam Butty with Helen, this year making a slow circuit from Birmingham to Bristol and then down to London before returning for the bulk of our Canal Festivals in July to Sept.

The planned route is as follows:

29th April to Mon 1st May - St Richards Festival, Vines Park, Droitwich, WR9 8LB

13th and 14th May - Coombswood Trust Open Weekend, Hawne Basin, Hereward Rise, Halesowen, B62 8AW

1st and 2nd July - Ware Boat Festival, Lee Navigation, Ware, Hertfordshire

22nd and 23rd July - Cosgrove Canal Festival, Cosgrove Lock, Lock Lane, Cosgrove, MK19 7JR

29th July - Linslade Canal Festival, Tiddenfoot Water Park, Linslade, Leighton Buzzard, Buckinghamshire

12th and 13th August - Blisworth Canal Festival, Blisworth, Northamptonshire, NN7 3BU

9th and 10th September - Black Country Boating Festival, Bumble Hole nature Reserve, Windmill End, Netherton, DY2 9HU

16th and 17th September - Tipton Canal Festival, Owen St, Tipton DY4 8HE

23rd and 24th September - Huddlesford Boat Gathering, Huddlesford Ln, Huddlesford, Whittington, Lichfield WS13 8PX

If you want to follow our progress we will be updating our location pave on the Wild Side website.

As well as the cruising and trading I will no doubt be doing some more writing for Waterways World, representing the Boating Businesses at CRT meetings and developing the Handyman business in the winter. 

Taken with the chutney making in the autumn and the marmalade making in the winter and a long trip to New Zealand I cant see my pace of life slowing down anytime soon.

Here is to 2017 for all of you. May it be healthy and fun. See you out there!

Tanked up for Christmas

Tanked up for Christmas

December 2016

The Jam Butty has been receiving some attention over recent weeks as we turn our thoughts to the 2017 trading season.

My time sleeping on the butty identified a deficiency, apart from a lack of internal height which is inescapable! Whilst the cross bed is very comfortable, there is no way to secure the back doors and hatch from the inside. I discovered this in Walsall Town Basin and I spent a night wondering which would open them first - a gust of find or a curious local. In the event the doors stayed shut but some catches were needed and this has been addressed.

Tearing a new hole "where the sun dont shine".

The next change was to maximise the storage space for jam at floor level. Last season I took the side panel off the locker under the long seat and exposed a space to store nearly 400 jars. To extend this even further I converted the drawer front under the "bed ole" into another side opening locker and made space for an extra 200 jars - all nice and cool below the waterline.

The latest development has been the creation of a locker in the stern triangle off the stern deck. In its previous incarnation the butty contained a raw water cooled diesel generator fed from a diesel tank in the stern. The generator is long gone and our needs are met by a 2kw petrol unit purchased from Aldi. The problem this brings is the storage of petrol - the boaters nemesis.

There is no way I am keeping any petrol in the body of the butty so I decided to convert the old diesel tank into a ventilated locker which will be perfect for a small can of petrol.

Good idea in theory but achieving the end proved a bit of a challenge. First I marked it out and then drilled each corner - so far so good. Then I attemped to cut it out with a metal jigsaw blade but after a difficult six inches it was clear the tool wasnt up to the job. Time to wield the angle grinder. I came armed with a set of 1mm discs and set to - soon discovering that rather then the 3mm steel I expected it was 5 or 6mm, and soon wore out the cutter discs. Another trip to screwfix and I set to with some 3mm cutters which although slower, did manage to achieve the desired cuts.

Inside a diesel tank

I had drained off the diesel before I started but I was very aware that there was some left sloshing around in the bottom of the tank. I know diesel is pretty inert stuff, but I was not entirely sure what would happen when it was showered in sparks from the cutter. I therefore had an extinguisher and a fire blanket to hand during the process.

As I cut the bottom line I thought I had trouble. Suddenly I was enveloped in foul smelling smoke, but rather than setting fire to the diesel I had burned out the motor on the grinder! It hung in there till I had almost finished and was able to pull the steel panel out, and then died a death.

The old tank was found to contain maybe 12 litres of the most disgusting diesel you ever saw. This was all decanted out and the tank wiped down ready to have a set of doors added. 

All in all a bit of a disgusting job but well worth the effort.

All change on The Bark

Renovations continue

December 2016

Whilst there have been no boat movements in recent weeks, there has been no shortage of work on the boats, preparing them for next year which will be on us in no time.

To start with Wand'ring Bark there is a whole pile of work left over from last spring. Our few outings of 2016 revealed a major flaw in the redesign of the saloon. The key issue was the creation of the L shaped settee. This new settee offers loads more space but it became apparent that we both like to sit with our legs up and as it was me who was left uncomfortable, a further refinement was needed. 

The extended settee (awaiting cushion)

After a bit of thought I removed the old stereo cupboard (which was pretty well redundant) and replaced it with an oak table level with the seat. This seems to work well and an additional cushion has been ordered from Elite Furnishing. This configuration has the added benefit of making the settee into a nice long single bed, which increases our hospitality options.

Linked to the new settee I have also made a set of shelves to go on the other side of the cabin, under the gunnel. This proved to be a bit more challenging than I anticipated because it needs to support a laptop without projecting too far into the room. Lots of ideas were considered and in the end a section of the top was made to flip out, extending the flat space to about 32cm.

Shelf with flap

Another new feature of the galley is the inclusion of a 32 litre 12 volt freezer which sits under the settee. This unit has been in place for a year but has never been run due to and absence of wiring and also an insufficient supply of electricity.

Shelves fixed but without power socket

But this is all about to change. Last week I took the plunge and installed the power supply cables which reach back to the bus bar in the electrical cabinet. It just needs wiring in.

This links onto the power supply issue. Whilst  the engine has always provided the power we need whist travelling, our prolonged stops will soon reveal its shortcomings. The only sensible answer is to go solar. After much research two 160 watt panels plus an MTTP controller were purchased from Midsumer. These big boys toys are currently cluttering up our store room, but will soon be fitted and plugged into yet another power cable which I ran alongside the one for the freezer. What the sun giveth, the freezer will certainly take away!

The next project is to create a tiltable cradle for the panels on the roof and the purchase of a new, larger battery bank - but thats for another day!

Showroom to scrap yard

A fresh set of wheels

December 2016

Today represented something close to momentous in the Tidy household - we bought a new car!

Our new wheels

What unusual about that I hear you cry! Well, I have long subscribed to the "run them into the ground" school of thought when it comes to cars and I have driven my faithful old Mondeo far beyond anything I have driven before.

This car was my old fleet vehicle which I had from new, and bought from my employer at four years old with nearly 80,000 miles on the clock. My company decided to stop supplying cars and at the time it seemed easiest to simply pay them the £3,700 they were asking and run it for a year or so. I worked out that after a year my car allowance would have paid for the vehicle and then some - after which I would move onto something more interesting.

Well, the years passed and the Mondeo simply refused to die. True it cost me £900 for a new clutch after 6 months, but after that it was just bits and bobs going wrong and so I kept it. I was a bit uncertain as it passed through the 100,000 mile threshold, but then I figured it was worth nothing so lets see how far it goes.

 We swapped this (nearly all the way to the moon)

For this!

And so it ran, and ran, and ran. However, over the last 12 months it has started to carry too many niggles, any one of which could signal the end. There is the odd drone between 60 and 70, the non functioning cooling fan which hasn't worked for over 3 years, the knocking suspension courtesy of Birmingham's many speed humps, the stereo which had a life of its own, the back seat belt which wouldn't undo (sometimes) and of course a multitude of dints from 12 years in the city. The killer was the power steering which had a new motor in the spring but this decided to stop working at far the end of its travel and frankly the car just wasn't worth another £200 bill. 

End of the road for the Mondeo

That said, the engine was still running sweetly at 172,000 miles, the turbo still worked, if a bit noisily and the car still delivered nearly 60 mpg on a run and 48 mpg around town. Lets say it didn't owe me anything with a depreciation rate of £460 per year. Put another way, the car has carried me the equivalent of seven timed round the circumference of the world!

So we need a new car - but what to get?

The problem is the Wild Side business - the jam weighs a ton and the paraphernalia means we really need a van. We could have looked at another estate but Helen's back prefers a higher ride so we were into the S Max sort of territory. In the end we decided to return to a Zafira which manages to offer a huge and very versatile load space in a car which is of quite modest dimensions.

We had a Zafira before which didn't end exactly happily (timing chain failure) but that was a 2.3 petrol so we opted for the 1.7 diesel with the uprated power output. Perhaps more importantly it is bright red which satisfies Helen's main criteria!

I will be finishing work on 12th April after which we will drop to just the one car so hopefully this one with a mere 20,000 miles on the clock will be with us for at least 10 years. 

I have to admit to being a bit sad to see the end of the Mondeo which commanded a trade in value of just £75! Its the first and probably the last time I will ever take a car out of the showroom and drive it all the way to the scrap yard.