Back cabin complete...

... and ready sail! Last Friday while i was off biking in Scotland that boat passed its boiler certificate. And we also got a letter back from the insurance brokers confirming we do not need another hull survey until 2014 having had one last year. Biking in Scotland was excellent. Four of us undergraduates from JCB borrowed our family car and trailer and spend three nights youth hosteling at Glentress near Melrose. The weather was fantastic and the riding even better. Beautiful!

A view from the track over the hill. Also my bike.

The group of misfits and myself!
One of the more technical parts of the 29km cross country trail.

The refit in the back cabin is now complete with the exception of a number more coats of varnish and a few bits that are going to wait until later. And we are set to leave the Marina under our own steam next weekend, only a week after we originally planned to do so.

We are now not planning to attend the SBA Trent lock rally, but will spend time around around the Chester/Anderton area until mid August when we will move the boat down the Autherley for the National rally en route to this years Shackerstone on the 7th and 8th of September. After which we plan to complete the Hudderfeild canal to Mirfeild, and return along the Rochdale canal with a plan to return to TravelReign (now Uplands Marina) for another winter.

An update on progress.

Since i last posted the work on the back cabin has nearly finished, and boiler inspector has been.

My dads being doing some work on the back cabin in evenings which means progress has been fairly good, although as always it ridiculously easy to get side tracked onto doing something more interesting or 'important' such as resealing the roof light which seams to have started leaking this winter, or just having a cup of tea and talking to the bloke on the next door boat!

This is the new framing to hold the drawers.
We also had to remove a section of insulation for the draw to fit as the swim makes the boat narrower here.
These are the drawers now in. Then just the ash fronts adding and the trip around the seorting.

I left home this Friday straight away and headed for the boat, which was in the process of having its boiler tested. It had passed the cold/dry inspection as expected and was in the process of raising steam pressure and everyone was just having a late lunch and preparing for the second stage of the test.
Unfortunately that didn't go so well. One of the gauges failed to work, and without it there was no point in continuing the test. Which is a shame, because this will be the first time that the boat hasn't passed its boiler inspection first time. Presumably the gauge became damaged during winter and will be replaced or reconditioned this week.

On another side i break up for a weeks spring break this Friday and a load of us undergraduates are going off for a four day trip to Scotland with the bikes. A night in Edinburgh town and two nights in a youth hostal by Glentress.

Back cabin is no more!

I was going to have a lazy day on Saturday, Ive not been getting much sleep and didn't feel great as well have having a few things i needed to sort out.

However i got a call from home asking what i was doing over the weekend, and in the end i went down to the boat anyway and we did a days work on the back cabin. I mentioned in my previous post that we had been making some new drawers for it, and now they are complete the rest of the work in refitting the bed/drawer area needs some attention. The plan is to increase the access to the storage in the backcabin so it can be got at by guests who may be staying onboard and so it doesn't fill with our clutter so much. There are a few drawers there already with tools and the like in, but the rest of the space wasn't really very accessible espcailly with the new cushions in place obstructing the ability to lift the lid of the bed up. But yeah, thats the plan anyway, more access and more storage!

Here is the back cabin before work started.
This is after we had removed all the drawer frames. Not sure the new ones will go in as fast.
This is use doing a test run of the spacing using the new drawers we made and packing parts.

It occurs to me as well that photos would be a bonus on the blog. I like photos, and everyone else has them. So i will have to get on with that! [photos added 22nd may]

I have some nice photos from Sunday as well when i went to the kitcar show at Stoneleigh near Coventry. Apparently its one of the best kitcar shows in Europe, and it certainly didn't disappoint.
- I have a plan to buy a lotus seven replica sometime soon, which would be a bit of fun. If said i would do it for a while, but now i have some money from my sandwich year that dream might actually become a reality. So Ive been looking at various cars and talking to as many people as i can for 6months or so now as well as reading and posting on a number of kitcar forums. Who knows eh!