Summertime

Been a quiet few months on the blog front, mainly due to being busy elsewhere. So ignoring the impulse to chronologically and accurately catalogue events, here are some highlights.

Nate was baptised in early July and we took Misterton to the local park the night before so that we could have a post-ceremony picnic. Luckily the weather held and we had a great time with friends and family.

Here is Nate and me before going to the church, looking relaxed.

    

The official shot post-baptism. We have from left to right, godparents Mat, Brian, Mary, Nate & me and godparents Helen and Johnny. I think we've covered a range of things for Nate here, he shouldn't be short of advice if he needs it.

 Once in the park I was able to show my nephews the simple joy of fishing things from the river and then throwing them back in again.

Mary and I finally managed to fit in a balloon ride we've been trying to schedule for years.

 Nate was unfazed as we took off, leaving him with my brother Nick who was over from NZ.

Up in the air with Mary.

 While Nick was staying with us, he made pancakes for breakfast one day. Finding Mary's food processor a bit imprecise, we pressed the drill into action.

As well as cooking, Nick helped with some jobs on Misterton, including stripping the paint from the mast. We decided that as the wood looked so sound we'd oil it rather than re-paint.

Here it is up, hard to see in this light but it looks really good now.

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I added an alternator to the engine so that Mary, Nate and I could go away for a little trip. The original engine may have had a dynamo fitted, as I was able to use the old mounting to fit the new alternator, but the current engine had never had one fitted, so there were no pulleys to use. I looked around and it seems ok to run the belt straight off the flywheel, this also gives a good speed increase as the Lister JP is too slow rev-ing otherwise.

The first attempts used 'nut-link' belting, sort of like a chain. This would've worked with two 'V'' pulleys, but wasn;t very effective on our setup. The substitution of a rubber belt fixed this and it was charging the batteries at 60 amps.

Top tip - I needed some heavy cable to connect the alternator to the battery bank and it was cheaper to buy a heavy duty jump lead set from Halfords than to buy the cable separately (£40 vs. £60).

Comments

[Jeremy CG]

Hi there
I like this idea of running the drivebelt off the flywheel
we have an 1962 single cylinder lister LD1 which I run a 35amp alternator on - I had tried a 90amp but it wasnt man enough - it might be if I try your idea
We use it to charge the 12v forklift truck batteires when on the cut - rather than run the main boat engine as uses less fuel etc
cheers JeremyCG