Boat engine in the canal

The plan was for Jan to do some shopping whilst I went on the Dudley Canal Trust tour of the canals into the mine shafts beneath Dudley.

I was almost certain that last time we were here the large Dudley Canal Trust Visitor Centre didn’t exist. 

My failing memory can’t be that bad because this is the new visitor centre opened by Princess Anne in 2015.  I duly purchased a ticket for the boat tour.  Obviously I look young because I was charged for an adult ticket rather than a senior.  Jan tells me I have to ask.  I’ll describe the 40 minute tour in tomorrows post.

Waiouru is currently moored on the off-side adjacent to a brick towpath and fence.  On the other side of the fence is the Black Country Museum.  There is a locked gate in the fence between the museum and the towpath near the stern of Waiouru.

This morning Jan heard the sound of a horse walking along the towpath.

This is the bridge with the mould on the bricks where I slipped over several days ago.  The horse is obviously from the Black Country Museum and with the harness on it I assume it’s used to tow narrowboats inside the museum.  I can’t think of a reason why they would want to walk the horse on the short length of towpath when there is a much larger area to exercise it inside the museum grounds?

Well I went of on the tour of the mines whilst Jan decided to return to the boat where she found Waiouru and the hire boat behind both floating free of the moorings in the middle of the canal.  She subsequently realised some of the museum staff had untied the boats and released them to float in the canal.  Why?  Because they had brought a second horse out of the museum to walk the towpath and it had slipped, falling into the canal.  The staff had then released both boats from their moorings as part of their effort to try and coax the panicking horse to swim (walk?) back round into the arm leading into the museum.

The fire brigade was called to assist in the effort. 

Eventually the horse was coaxed around into the arm where it was fitted with slings and lifted out of the canal using a JCB loader.

One very cold and frightened boat engine was retrieved from the water.  Of course during all of this I was underground and blissfully unaware of all the excitement.  Meanwhile Waiouru drifted back towards the mooring where Jan was able to grab the centreline and resecure her.

After completing the tour I was carefully walking back up and over that very slippery bridge when I happened to notice a horse in the museum being attended to by people in periodic dress.  So I took a photo.

That’s when I was approached by a man from the museum and requested me to not take photos.  Of course I didn’t know why I shouldn’t take photos!  I was on CRT property and it was just a horse being feed and having a coat placed on it.

No doubt the museum will now review their risk assessment and decide on an alternative location to walk the horses.

Boo hoo

Des the ITV weatherman didn’t tell us the truth last night.  Today was supposed to be better than yesterday.  Instead we’ve had a cold and rainy day.

These photos are from yesterday.

There are only two visiting boats here and we are on the secure side behind a locked gate.  The CRT facilities are on the opposite side of the canal.

The swing bridge across the canal has been opened because the Dudley Canal Trust attraction was closed for a private function.  I hadn’t realised that when I left Waiouru with the rubbish yesterday afternoon.  I never made it to the bin!  Not because the bridge was open, but rather I took a tumble on the mould covered bridge to the left in the above photo.  The soles of the boots are hard rubber and they slipped on the slimy bricks.  I managed to turn to the left during the fall landing on my left buttock and shoulder.  Plenty of fat there to absorb the impact.

In between showers a boat arrived today.  It winded and used the services before departing approximately an hour later.  Both of us had an urge to do some cleaning and maintenance today.  However we managed to get rid of the urge by forcing ourselves to recline back in our swivel chairs.  There’s always tomorrow.  Dinner was Chinese steamed buns washed down with ice cream!

Delayed post

Today’s blog post has been delayed due to the laptop being very busy.  We have a new addition to our Blue Ray library.  The last Star Wars film.

The problem with disks is unless you have an expensive multi-disk player, it’s a case of continuously exchanging disks.  I’m also slightly worried that having purchased the expensive disk, it might get damaged.  My solution is to make a copy of the disk and then store it in a cool, dark and safe place.  That way it’s only the copy likely to get damaged.  The disk is in 3D format so I used the program PavTube to copy it.  The problem is the laptop only has an Intel i5 processor and the copy process took almost 10 hours.  Hence the delay in writing the post.

The last step was to check if the copying worked.

It’s 3D and has been converted to SBS (side by side) format.  The laptop isn’t 3D capable which is why there are two images.  If it was a 3D screen the images would be slightly overlapped and the 3D perspective would be apparent when viewed with 3D spectacles. What we will do is stream the copy from a hard drive to a 3D capable TV.  Now I have to make a 2D copy.  Another 10 hours of not having a laptop.

Black Country Living Museum

With visitors arriving today we decided a trip to the adjacent Black Country Living Museum might be a good means of entertaining them.  Neither of us had visited the museum the last time we moored here so it would be “killing two birds with one stone”.

However before our visitors arrived I decided to check the boat sliding rear hatch.  It’s been making a rumbling noise when opened and closed.  The worst case scenario was a failing bearing but after examining the brass running strip I thought the problem might be a build up of compressed “crud” on the surface of the brass making it uneven.  A little like corrugations on the dirt road.  My solution was to clean the surface of the brass with some of Jan’s “Pink” cleaning paste.  The “Pink” did a great job in removing the line of black “crud” and now the hatch runs without a rumble.

    

Our visitors arrived and we headed off to the canal side entrance to the museum only to find it closed.  Apparently the Dudley Canal Trust was holding a private function and that access point was closed to the public.  We had to retrace our route and then walk around the road to the main entrance.  It rained continuously during our visit, so not the best day.  However the more scary thing was recognising items from my childhood.  They are now in a museum!

Hopefully the photos will be their own explanation

I remember seeing similar to these

But not this

The attractions in the 1930’s fair were quite familiar.  But then NZ was a bit behind the times

Oh yes, I do remember doing my lines writing with a steel nib pen and an inkwell.  The biro had been invented but were weren’t allowed to use one.

Girls to the right and boys to the left.  We’d chant our times tables with the teacher beating the rhythm using his cane.  I can still chant them.

 

My NZ childhood didn’t look anything like this.

In the clouds

Must have been a large fire somewhere around Stourport last night because that bright red evening sky didn’t result in today being bright and sunny.  We moved forward onto the water point at Bumble Hole to top up the tank.  Good water pressure here so it didn’t take long.

The cruising plan was to go back through Netherton Tunnel and turn left at Dudley Port Junction.  We’d then head north up the New Main Line to Factory Locks (3) turning left above them and look for a mooring at The Black Country Museum.

There was a slight surprise on the approach to the tunnel.  It’s long, straight and wide which meant when we came through a fortnight ago we could see the other end.

No far end?

Still no far end?

Quarter of the way through and we entered cloud (well probably mist).  Visibility was down to one boat length.

It stayed like this until the last 400 metres.  You can see in the above photo that we have the headlight tilted upwards.  Pointing it straight ahead can blind oncoming boaters and actually seems to reduce visibility.

Whilst heading towards Factory Locks we happened to notice the small fake dome and minaret on a reasonably new building beside the canal.  It’s obviously a Muslim building which I assumed to be a mosque.  However Jan thought it was a school.  

The three Factory Locks were in our favour  which made the transit quite fast.

Our left turn at Factory Junction above the locks took us onto new water.  We’ve not previously cruised the short length of canal between here and Tipton Junction.

There is a statue of a boxer in the middle of Tipton Green beside the canal.

It’s a statue of William Perry, The Tipton Slasher (1819-1880).  His parents were canal boat people.  Apparently he was a ‘hard man’ who wore the scars of his fights with pride.  The Slasher had his first fight at 16 winning five guineas.  By 20 he’d had all his front teeth knocked out. 

William fought eleven contests, winning six, drawing two and losing three.  His longest fight was 133 rounds and his last in 1857 aged 38 against Tom Sayers.  The prize was 400 guineas.  The Slasher was well past his prime whilst Sayers was at his peak.  The Slasher never quit and took his beating standing.  After 1 hour 40 minutes his financial backer threw in the towel realizing The Slasher would never win.

He died of alcoholism and consumption aged 61 and was buried in the local churchyard.

Meanwhile we continued on to the Black Country Museum moorings where we found only one other boat. 

On the mend

Two old boaters moor at Branston and are having a few ales in the Boathouse.  One says “Do you know lions have sex 5 to 8 times a day”  “Dammit” says his friend “and I just joined Rotary!”

We must be over the worst of this head and chest cold as last night we turned off the Lockgate stove before bed.  There’s been much less coughing and sneezing today and we even managed to get off the boat for supplies at Aldi.  However we returned to the warmth of the cabin reasonably promptly in an effort to ensure the health situation doesn’t reverse.

Two boats passed by today; one in each direction.  Neither stopped to moor so we’re still on our own. 

Although you can’t tell it from the photos, it was after dusk when I went for an early evening local walk.

Hummm… with a sky that colour tomorrow should be a good day!

It was actually almost dark when I took the above photo.  The camera lens does a great job of capturing the ambient light.

I fiddled with the settings on this next photo in an effort to reproduce the light as it was.  However it’s still too light.

Gradual return to normal life

Yesterday was (hopefully) the toughest.  Both of us headed back to bed around noon in an effort to shake off this nasty cold.  Jan made chicken and left over veg soup for dinner Monday night and we didn’t cook anything yesterday.  This morning Jan woke me just before 9am and I think I’m feeling a little better.  Poor Jan is still coughing and sneezing, although perhaps not as much.

We left the stove running overnight (set just below 1 on the scale) and I actually felt too hot during the night.  The stove is now back on 1 and the cabin temperature is 24°C. 

Now the Garmin Nuvi gps is working I’ve been looking at updated maps.  Of course I don’t want to purchase them and have gone back to a previously found website for the most recent set of UK maps from Talkytoaster <link here>.  I’ve also found another source of free Garmin maps for Australia <link here>.  The latter website only provides the maps as individual tiles in IMG format.  However I managed to combine the 16 tiles that make up Australia into one map and install them into Garmin Mapsource on the laptop using MapsetToolkit.   The map could then be transferred from Mapsource to the Nuvi.  If you want to know how to directly upload a map into a Garmin gps then this link <here> explains how to do that.  I prefer to load maps onto the laptop where I can examine them before transferring them across to the gps.

We are back to being moored on our own at Bumblehole.  The two other boats departed this morning……. do they know something we don’t? 

Oh, I went back into the engine bay yesterday morning to check whether we had continuity to the 240V heater element in the calorifier.  The hamstrings and neck promptly complained, reminding me they had previously suffered doing the same task two days earlier.  Pushing that little black button appears to have solved the issue, so I reassembled everything.  We rarely use the 240V immersion heater because it’s not very often we are on shore power.  Actually the last time would have been six months ago in Sheffield.

Quiet day

Our second day staying on the boat in the warmth of the cabin with me trying to shake off the more serious man flu whilst Jan gets over the normal flu!

Despite feeling miserable one task was completed.  The Garmin GPS was again disassembled so I could look for the reason why the touch screen wasn’t working.  Disassembling it for the second time proved to be a much quicker operation.  It didn’t take much to see the problem was an unconnected ribbon cable between the screen and the printed circuit board.

The terminal connection is so small that my eyesight wasn’t up to seeing how the connection was made.  A magnifying glass assisted and I eventually realised the end of the ribbon slid under the tiny black flap.  I initially tried to open the flap using the end of a jewellers screwdriver before realising it was already open.  To get the cable back into the terminal and close the flap I needed my fist and second hands to hold the case open whilst my third and fourth hands positioned the ribbon cable and closed the securing flap (yes, Jan helped me!)

For some reason I had a clever idea and decided to test the gps worked before reassembling it.

Good news….. the touch screen now works and the Nuvi found the satellites.  It was then reassembled and tested as second time. 

I must admit that halfway through this operation I was starting to think Jan was right with her comment “Sometimes it’s better to spend a little more money and buy a new one!”

The dreaded sound of strimmers (whipper-snipper) and motor mowers were heard in the afternoon.  Surely CRT wouldn’t be cutting the towpath grass?  No it was council workers.  Actually they probably weren’t council workers as the council probably wouldn’t pay staff to cut grass on a Sunday.  Eventually I noticed one walker standing with his back to the boat and on his Hi-Viz vest was “SUPERVISOR”.  These would be “Community Payback” people.  In NZ it’s called called ‘periodic detention’.  

These guys were so slow at cutting the grass I doubt they will get employment with Fountains!

The engine, the calorifier & the gps

Another 250 hours on the clock so it was time for an engine service.  We ran the engine to warm up the oil and Jan seized the opportunity to also do a load of washing.  Doing an oil change on a cold day can have advantages.  The additional clothing under the overalls means you can drape yourself over the hot engine for longer periods.  Despite this I was starting to break into a sweat by the time I’d finished pumping all the oil out of the sump.  The absorbent baby paper nappy makes a reasonable job of catching most of the oil when removing the oil filter. 

When I drained off the bottom of the first diesel pre-filter there were a few black specks in the diesel.  I guess they are pieces of splatter from the construction.  The second pre-filter was clean.  The alternator belts looked OK and appeared to have sufficient tension.  Battery water levels were good.  Everything looks good to go for another 250 hours.   

I used that ugly mirror from the 99P shop to see the element and thermostat on the back of the calorifier.  Access to this area proved to be rather difficult for an old man.  In order to to see the mirror you need to crouch over the engine and then look up.  It’s an awkward position involving some neck strain.  However I was able to view the area and noted there were two thermostats (which surprised me) and the element.  The thermostats are connected in series with different temperature settings.  I’m guessing one is the desired water temperature and the other is the over temperature cut-out.  There was a small black button which I pressed and heard a click.  I;m guessing the upper temperature cut-out had tripped and hopefully I’ve now reset it.  I couldn’t get continuity through the thermostats using the multimeter so I’m hoping this is because the water in the calorifier is already very hot after running the engine to do the oil change.  The plan is to wait until the water is cold tomorrow morning and recheck the continuity. If there is a circuit them my theory was good.  Otherwise I may have to replace the thermostat.

The last task of the day was to replace the battery in the Garmin Nuvi.  The battery came without any instructions so I carefully examined the Nuvi noting the two small torx screws on the reverse of the folding antenna.

The screws are very small and could easily be lost.  I used four of the empty compartment in my weekly pill container to ensure I didn’t misplace any of the tiny components

The screws.

With the screws removed it was possible to pry the back off the antenna.  This exposed (well not very well) the hinge pin and spring.  I released the pin by compressing the spring with a small jewellers screwdriver

The black plastic hinge pin and spring can be seen in the middle of the above photo.  With the antenna now able to be carefully moved to one side I had access to two further screws under the hinge.  These were also torx screws.

The next step was to separate the front off the Nuvi using the green plastic tool.  Using a plastic trim removal tool minimizes the possibility of damaging the case.  By working carefully around the join I was able to eventually separate the back from the front.

Green trim tool placed on the Nuvi for the photo

By sliding the face of the case backwards I exposed a further two torx screws which secure the printed circuit board to the rear of the case.

Once the screws were removed I used the plastic trim tool to pry the circuit board from the base.  By lifting the circuit board up slightly I was able to unplug the two cable connects.  You can see the loose cables and plugs to the left in this next photo.  The battery is the white rectangle in the top left.

It proved quite difficult to remove the battery as it was held in place firmly with double sided tape.  I managed to pry it out with the trip tool.

The new battery was installed and the process reversed to reassemble the gps.  Well it actually wasn’t that easy.  Some very fiddly bits meant it took quite some time to complete the reassembly.

Turned the Nuvi on and it fired into life

BUT THE TOUCH SCREEN NOW DOESN’T WORK!     SO I’LL HAVE TO GO BACK AND DISASSEMBLE IT TO FIX THAT PROBLEM!!!!!!!

Man Flu

Dear reader I apologize for the lack of a post yesterday.  Man Flu caught me on Wednesday afternoon and I spent much of yesterday trying to free myself.  I don’t believe I managed to get any sleep last night, however Jan tells me she heard me snoring whispering sweet nothings.

Today we managed a trip to the Merry Hill Centre where we collected a couple of packages we’d ordered.  The post office in the centre will accept mail using the poste restante system.

We now have a replacement catalyzer for the Lockgate diesel stove (top item).  The original catalyzer is working but has developed a bulge in the outer core half way down.  Actually I’m suffering from the same condition!

The bottom three items are the replacement battery for the Garmin Nuvi gps and a couple of small tools I’ll need to disassemble the unit.

We have been moored in Merry Hill for a week and the canal had frozen over for the last three days.  Although the water tank was still ¾ full we decided it might be prudent to move back to Bumble Hole and be closer to a water tap.  The ice looked like it had melted but in reality there was just a thin layer of water sitting on top of the ice.  

The ice made for a slow but noisy trip to Blowers Green.  Things got a little tricky above the lock where there is a basin with a hard right turn to continue on towards Bumble hole.  The basin was iced over making it very difficult to turn Waiouru.  Eventually I broke the ice with the boat pole and then Jan and I pulled the boat out of the lock and around the bend onto the water point.  The water pressure here is rather poor and it took an hour to top up the tank.

Jan thought she saw a Robin flying above the water on the far side of the basin.  However the flash of blue suggested it might be a Kingfisher.  It landed on a post on the other side of the basin.  I used the camera zoom to take a photo.  The Kingfisher is on the top of the white post in the middle of the photo.

I couldn’t see it either! 

Digital zoom in…….

We continued on towards Bumble hole breaking a path through the ice.  Eventually it got dark and we had to use the headlight.  The ice cleared just before Bumble Hole where we found only one other boat on the designated moorings.

We’ll probably be here for a few days.

From the past

The necrophiliac genealogist in the family has been spending the cold weather working on her tablet exploring the furthest extends of the Jones family tree In the process she has been discovering some rather unusual events.

In 1614 William Holland, a successful mercer of Chichester endowed his old school at Steyning, Sussex with lands and rents to maintain the school with additional funds for a headmaster and up to 50 boy boarders.  During the early 18th century the school had fallen on hard times with almost no pupils.  Moreover the schoolmaster was discovered to be embezzling the funds.  The school building hadn’t been painted in almost 100 years.

Apparently the situation was saved by an ancestor of mine, Mr George Airey who arrived in 1840 as the new schoolmaster.   George was a distant relative on my paternal grandmother’s side.  He stayed at the school for 30 years.  Steyning Grammar School still exists <link here>.

We were both rather amused by one of George’s antics

“he always cut the boys’ toenails himself when their feet were washed once a week in the dining room – there were to be no ingrowing toenails in Steyning!”

Children had their feet washed once a week!  What about the rest of their little bodies?

For the second morning in succession we’ve woken to find the canal iced over.  Yesterday it was thin but by this morning it was twice as thick.

But we’re having lovely clear days with a blue sky.

I’ve been wondering how much useable life is left in the laptop battery.  This can be achieved on a Windows machine using the following commands

• Click Start button and type "cmd" (without quotes) in the search programs and files box.
• In the command prompt, type "cd %userprofile%\desktop" (without quotes) and press Enter
• Next type "powercfg -energy" (without quotes) and press Enter

It will enable a trace for 60 seconds. When the process is finished, an HTML file will be generated on your desktop including all the details you need. 

Our laptop has lost 25% of its total capacity since we bought it.

The query arose after I discovered our Garmin car gps battery has virtually no life left in it.  Of course boaters know batteries don’t last forever so at some stage the laptop battery will have to be replaced.