Back in the garden shed

We woke to a cold but relatively clear day.  No sign of any snow and just a hint of ice on the edges of the towpath puddles.  The sky even turned blue and the sun put in an appearance.  However it wasn’t particularly warm.  The clear weather provided an opportunity to do ‘bloke’ things in the garden shed.  First task was to lift the engine hatch and remove the accumulated condensation with the boatyard industrial wet-vac.  As we have been using the Hurricane as our main heating source I decided to give it a good visual check.

Everything looks fine!  I wonder what the hour meter reading is?

OK… 153 hours. 
It will be interesting to see when we reach the 1000 hour service.  I’m quite impressed with the Hurricane.  The thermostat controls it efficiently and it actually doesn’t run that much.  Probably due to the effectiveness of the boat insulation.  Having it controlled through the Empirbus system is an advantage as it can be turned on or off from beside the bed, plus two the locations in the boat!
It started as the photo was being taken so I took another photo of the burning chamber through the small window.

We’ve been turning it off at night because Waiouru tends to retain the heat.  If it starts to get really cold we’ll probably run the Refleks 24/7 and only run the Hurricane for an hour each day to heat the water.
Room has been found in the garden shed for the two blue plastic containers that we will use to store the spare diesel.

I wouldn’t store petrol here but the diesel is probably alright.
We also need to find something to carefully stow the two testers in the engine bay.

Top - Hydrometer for the batteries and bottom is the tester for the anti-freeze coolant.
The last job was to practice my rope splicing and make up a couple of eyes for the inflatable fenders recently purchased in Reading.

I deliberately didn’t melt the ends of the strands to prevent them fraying.  This is because melting them and create a hard and sharp edge that could tear a palm or fingers if the rope was pulled through them.

Before someone leaves a comment telling me the white plastic fender handrail hook can damage the paintwork I should mention I’ve reshaped the profile of all the hooks to match the handrail profile.  All the edges were then rounded.  Hopefully all this extra effort is worthwhile.  The surplus rope has been used to practice tying knots.
Jan has grown used to the taping on the side hatch and feeding all the little critters.  But this is one lovely ‘critter’ she’d very much like to keep.  However I don’t believe Bec is prepared to give up Tilly!

Bec & Tilly on one of their daily towpath walks.  Gosh Tilly…. you’re growing very fast!