Half Term

I managed to miss most of half term, due to a work conference in Barcelona (no, not all beer and skittles). Mary and Nate went to the Isle of Wight to visit friends while I was away, but on friday we took Misterton down to Weybridge. Chertsey lock will soon be shut for the winter, so we won't be able to come this way until spring.

Chertsey bridge feels like a tighter fit than it really is, as this photo shows.

Weybridge was very pleasant, there were some good 24 hour moorings on the edge of town.

We enjoyed the pubs and cafes on friday afternoon and saturday morning, but we needed to make our way back upstream. We took a turn round the island that's formed by Desborough cut and then headed to Laleham, our stop for the night. The Three horseshoes pub is close by, so of course we went there for a quiet one. As quiet a drink as you can have with a 10 month old....

We had moored for the night opposite '4 All Marine', some interesting boats there. Nate spent most of this trip in his car seat watching the world go by. One thing we've learnt is 2-3 hours in a car seat is about the limit for him, and therefore dictates how far we can go. No bad thing really, Misterton isn't a speedboat...

 There have been lots of other bits and pieces going on since the summer, I've made a new exhaust for the engine, chipped and treated some rust and Keith is back, lining out the back cabin (I sprayfoamed it myself at the end of the summer, its ok, but I would still recommend getting the professionals in if anyone is thinking of having a go themselves).

Now, winter approaches!

Nate

A few Nate themed pictures. Our friends took their barge out for a spin a couple of weeks ago, and we passed them as we were driving back to Misterton. In order not to miss seeing them out on the river, I suggested alfresco dining for Nate.

Jenna came by, looked impressive out on the river.

I've been continuing on with a few projects, the decks are now finished in terms of painting and I've made a new exhaust for the engine. This is now from 3 inch diameter pipe, the previous one was 2 inches, but I'm all for ensuring that we get all 30 horses from Misterton's elderly JP3.

We took Nate to the London aquarium the other day, he was beside himself with excitement as he likes fish. There was a whole section on the fish of the Thames, this may be one of them.

Finally, on sunday we heard a commotion outside and saw David Walliams (of Little Britain fame) paddle past on his charity raising journey to swim the Thames.

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).

June 2

Just before the month ends, some more engine stuff! The heads got cleaned up and rebuilt, two new exhaust valves and skimmed to clean up the mating faces. Here is an early shot in the re-assembly...

....and further on....

....here it is all ready to go.

For those of you with high speed connections, here it is running.

Misterton's Lister JP3M after the heads have been refurbished from Simon Sparrow on Vimeo.

Finally for mum or anyone else not interested in engines, here is Mary & Nate,

June

Time keeps rushing by, its June already! Nate is growing and is now over 15lbs. Still not much help round the boat though. I've cleaned up the decks and treated them for rust, then painted them. The grey anti-slip paint we put on in the dry dock in Thorne a couple of years ago didn't;t work out too well. The new paint is Craftmaster Raddle Red, which I used on Iris, my narrowboat and it seemed to work well there. The middle picture shows the side I still need to do.......

The engine has also needed some attention, the headgaskets seem to have been leaking water into the oil, not good. Hopefully a simple fix, but its always easier to take things apart than put them back together again.

 I'm taking the heads to a local engine builders to get them cleaned and checked. Fingers crossed!