Diesel filter, batteries and boating at last

It seems I just got out of the habit of blogging. Well, here's the first of what I hope will be a restart, coinciding with the relaxation of lockdown (to the extent that we are allowed to stay overnight, self-catering, away from home) and BOATING! The first job was to look through the log to see when I last changed the fuel filter. Oops: it was 2.5 years ago! This is what the first filter looked like when I removed it.

I'd say it had been doing its job. I replaced that and the spin-on filter. The engine oil and filter had not many hours on the clock, so that was OK. We set off on Tuesday 13th April from our new mooring at Market Drayton heading north. We stopped for the night just above Adderley Top Lock having done all of threee miles. We were in no hurry. During the night the fridge struggled. A flashing red light indicated it wasn't happy with the battery voltage; when I saw that it had dropped to about 11V neither was I. The current (pun intended) set was six years old so time for a replacement. I ordered four 110Ah leisure batteries from Advanced Battery Supplies at 1155 on Wednesday; they were delivered at 0845 on Thursday which was pretty good going. These are the old batteries in situ ...

... and here are the new ones installed exactly the same way.

There's always a big flash when I reconnect the chunky inverter positive lead; I wasn't expecting the flash when I reinserted the fuse to reconnect the solar panels. I had taken the precaution of covering up the solar panels, so why the flash? Now we could set off again, this time southbound to meander round the Four Counties Ring with a trip up the Caldon Canal thrown in. That's the plan, anyway. It felt good to be boating again. This is Bridge 61 on the Shroppie.

We stopped at Tyrley Top. THe next morning the fridge was happy and so was I. The landslips at Woodseaves Cutting look worse every time we pass. Here the towpath is blocked to all but the most agile.

The caravan site at Goldstone Wharf looked busy.

I shall try to catch up by covering two or three days at a time - then it will be situation normal. Ha ha.