Home Moorings

Well bit of a disaster and a change of plans. Yesterday evening I was sitting watching TV and Diana was just completing cooking dinner when the screen went blank and the induction hob fan fell silent. First thought the invertor shut down on overload, but it didn’t fire up again, I looked at the volt meter and instead of reading 26 ish volts it was counting down like a space launch. The reason, after a few check, the 24 volt DC isolator had thrown its hand in. With the aid of a set of jump leads 24 volt power was restored so dinner could be eaten. I then rooted through the odds and ends of cable shelf and found a nice length of reasonable cable with a lug on each end, but it was 2” too short, so a longer piece of 6mm had a yellow crimp fitted each and was used to connect the battery to the main fuse. The inverter now functioned so the fridge was running again but no way would that thin piece of wire give us full power. It also meant that the alternator was also connected to the 24 volt batteries. We then planed our trip home. Even this changed during the day.

This morning we were away at quarter to 9 on a lovely calm sunny morning heading for Hillmorton Locks. Again very few boats moored in Rugby. The water level against the weir there looked very good and the battery was charging nicely, I went below to check and the connections and cable were nice and cool.
We had just passed Clifton Cruisers when we caught up with a very slow hire boat but it was still before 10 o’clock so the lock still shut, When we arrived at the locks we were Number 4 in the queue so it was about 11 before we went up the first lock. Thankfully the abandon boat on the lock moorings below the middle lock has been moved out of the way. We must have met 10 or a dozen hire boats this morning.
Back at the marina we slipped into our berth and had lunch, even boiling the kettle for a cup of tea, our first since yesterday afternoon. That gone I disconnected the batteries and removed the master switches, both 12 and 24 volt as they are in a stainless steel box and brought them home to replace the faulty one.

Today’s Journey 6½ with 3 locks in 3¾ hours