Right well I've been back in Stalham now for a couple of days and the the weather is
spot-on on the way up here we have a lot of mechanical issues unfortunately about
20 miles out the thermostat housing kept leaking
gasket kept blowing and I must have taken it off about half a dozen times(x12) and put more gasket
gasket paper on over and over and over again and it just kept on blowing down one
side so I examined the housing and I found that it was actually slightly
warped and this is this is a first for me I've never come across anything quite
like this but fortunately I had a spare one and it was almost identical but it
meant having to route the pipe a different way and because of that it had a kink in
it so it was non-stop problems so back in Stalham we ordered a brand-new one and
some good quality cork gaskets and we're in the process of repairing this now
that came from ASAP supplies which ironically was in Beccles as well which
is quite crazy continue just come down from there
that was only 20 pounds and on the old one this surface here where it's mating
it just warped enough to keep letting the air out so that was a real pain in
the arse and I kept having to stop before the engine overheated and then
put more water in and obviously air was getting in and it wasn't circulating so it's been a
nightmare really what we got here in the end though in the process now put it all
together and hopefully sometime today will be able to move on okay well we're
up and running
the thermostat housing I got was a patent part just didn't seem to fit at all so
let's make do the old one for the time being and I've tried my best to flatten it out
We are just coming back into coming into Sutton now and this is probably the
calmest I've ever seen the water absolutely exceptional the engine is
running a little bit hotter than I would like it to be
but I have flushed the whole system out so we probably gotta some air in
there we're working our way out now I just had a look at the diesel tank because we
came up at four miles per hour all the way from the Beccles which is the best
part of 50 miles
it looks like I've only gone through about 20 liters of diesel with is quite remarkable really
considering the first time I did it I came up about six or seven miles per
hour
and I went through basically the best part of 50 liters so it certainly has proven now
to travel along at a slower speed and get the best economy. Right its going to be nice
to come back into Sutton it's one of my favorite stops and just going to keep
my eye on the engine for a couple of days and try and find another thermostat
housing that actually fits properly so that's over and out for the time being
one job after another i noticed i was only a little bit of a leak slight leak
and there's an old Bush here which is obviously corroded luckily enough I was
able to find something with the same threat so I'm now cutting it off and
hopefully that will fix the problem and bites you gotta love me
they're always keep you busy right here's a job drive been waiting about
three months to do and i had to be an electric . to do it the bilges after
three months of living on a boat with breadcrumbs dust dog hair it all gone
into the building and all turn into this most revolting lacks lunch now I've got
the floor floor boards up and I've got a homer wetback and I've gotten like
managed to get it all out and even though it looks pretty unsightly now I'm
quite chuffed because it means when it's a hot sunny day I can repeat the process
again and this will dry and I can paint it and I want to get these bilges so
clean I can eat my food of it and i think one of the ways you can judge
about is helping the builders are and i'm quite shuffle now that this is
obviously going to be something which is achievable
yeah
doing the rounds we've got some read issues here today which is causing
absolute nightmare except he's trying to get past them as they do then it was
nice to see these reed islands take care of
I got caught on the store the other night coming out of salamanders come
back
the wind is whether I've ever tried i finally decided to make my camping and
gas charcoal burner the reason why I'm gone for a campaign guess option is
because the calor gas bubbles or the full-size gas bottles if they're just
going to be too intense because this is going on a boat so what I've done is
I've gone for the camping gas and also it doesn't have the handle on the top
like this one so you don't have to worry about taking that off now first thing i
did put the regulator on turn it upside down and left it for good old while
obvious which john to get everything out now this rate this part of the win here
I thought it would be reversed read but looking at it now I'm not a hundred
percent sure whether it is i got that out by drilling it out now before I did
that the first thing I did is I drilled a hole in the bottom here once i was
sure that every gas was out and I used a cordless drill rather than the main hook
up I thought little bit nervous doing it obviously but I just took my time once
that was done I then put a funnel on there and I slowly filled it with water
you'll still get us one of gas when you do that but they believe into the
fragrance set foot on gas also i've been told but don't quote me on that
so filled up with water then that drain out once i was happy with that is a
drill this out now you will come across the stainless steel ball bearing in
there you can get a bit tricky at that stage just give it a whack
if you haven't been able to unscrew that is and as you draw around the stops to
get your way around you can actually start to break off the grass bits at the
end he does tend to fall apart now what i'm doing here is I've marked where I'm
going to have the door i may have to have something at the bottom here as
well and I may have gone a little bit too high up here but we're really not to
find out until it's done
the reason why I'm doing this drill holes here now is because i tried to use
it takes over the metal blade and he wouldn't budge at all so I thought if I
lineup where I want the whole I can come across with a grinder with the cutting
disc and easy for me to follow so that's the stage where the moment and i will
update you recording right what we're doing is we're burning the paint off the
gas cylinder wanted to be made into charcoal burner be using this one
because it was so crowded
they wouldn't accept his return and here is the pipe which is going to be the
initial chimney on here like say just burning that off now have another Pro
sister yesterday we let the gas cylinder which were turning into a charcoal
burner
we've got all the paint off now so now that stone will grind that down and
we'll start making the hole for the chimney the door and also the small
event here for cleaning out the chocolate what have you and hopefully
that'll turn into a good product but so fast
this gave me a bit of a chuckle coming suddenly this morning I've made a
previous video about all the islands three diners come down to the
sunway in global action whatever you now there was fourteen states which I
thought was a lot then when you look up there there's 12345 better six of seven
so there's about twenty stakes
it's right by the entrance coming into something for all the weeds to be held
in place of all this one's i've seen on the Broads this is the first one I've
seen actually in its own nest
look at the size of its amazing i just turn the engine off and cruising by this
is right on the entrance into something so this is getting both going past all
the time but that is the first to me
amazing right well the size out shorter on flip-flops on and it's time to start
doing all the jobs that we couldn't do in the wintertime right now I've decided
to start working on the lockers seems to be suffering the liquid in rest and I
want to build a new top for these because these are some kind of composite
and quite frankly I think they're bloody ugly so start with the jobs now and
whether it's going well its the Easter weekend now and I'd have to say the
weather today is probably being the best so far this year starting to feel a bit
more like someone right when I was just about to head off from Stalham go get
some lunch at Sutton and it appears i'm stuck on the bottom i normally do touch
here but over the winter months with the lack of boat traffic seems the stilted
right up
what's also contributed to it is the fact that the the bankers
collapse saw the votes will go soon
so all that marked down there now prevented me from going so we have to
sit for awhile and why we got a couple of pieces that we're going to put on the
boat and this is gonna go on the oil cooler and that's an extra nipple just
in case you can't get it to work
also the bilge pumps arrived so we saw that this is the old bilge pump
cartridge and you can see it's actually physically burnt out my reckoning is it
was actually probably running dry which you're not supposed to see that holder
that was where the bills which was so it was getting put on i think by my feet in
the nighttime which is one of those crazy design flaws you come across the
second home boat anyway I got anyone actually in the cartridge I want because
i want to keep the rest for another project this one
the pumps are 600 gallons per hour but I've seen one that is 4,000 gallon
sprayer which works out it's just I was 66 gallons a minute which is about 66 of
those small petrol cans for your lawn mowers and stuff and outboards so that's
quite impressive so I think basically in the event or something quite serious
happening like maybe the whole being breached or maybe a stopcock failing
drastically then it might be nice to know there was a bilge pump on border
could do 4,000 gallons per hour because I would have thought with that amount of
water discharge you've got a very good chance of making it back to port so I'm
starting investing one of those so I'm gonna bang this on now and get the peace
of mind that comes with the electric bill
alright we gotta build from working here and decided to relocate the switch from
there over to here so it can't be accidentally activated during the night
and find quite amusing somebody actually thought it was good i do putting it
there in the first place but there you go and we had a bit of paddling now
we're going to get rest of this paneling down then once that's all finished we
can start putting some nice comfortable something like some soup record
that stuff they doing there when i first got the boats and started exploring
around the boat i discovered that there was a huge storage locker right behind
here and it was all covered up this white paneling and I thought I'd better
reincorporate that because there's enough room and they'll put an outboard
a dinky little not one of the other things i found in there was this huge 12
volt fan and it was not on the white up to anything but i decided to use it so
what I did is I put it behind this panel here and it can seem very handy
especially if it's really content about colonization of other and you know you
do some cooking or something but it might also be handing the winter it's
got some power to that I was really quite justified right well I've started
on a job now which i'll be waiting literally months to do and the winter it
was just two down call to do it really what we have here is the steering gear
for the rudder tiller assembly etc etc as is all house in this box here now
what I have here is I have three of these bearing houses which I think are
known as a pillar boxes or or plumber boxes and there's a third one down here
now
these contain bearings barrington that one of fine
these two here over the years which is probably about three decades of this
boat the waters got in or they haven't been greased and the bearings that are
inside have actually disintegrated to a point where they actually look like that
and one each
and there's the other one there now is quite baffled at first because when i
took these apart these were also on the bearings as well and after a bit of
grease they came off turns out these are sleeve adapters and the purpose of this
is so that you can take
a bearing which is a self-aligning once it is tapered and by putting this sleeve
in you can then adjust the nuts at the level you wanted to be at on a shaft and
hold it there which is what is the case we have here because also got the
vertical shaft here and the bearings were basically they got a grip onto that
somehow so it's through the use of these sleeve adapter sleeve nuts that you were
able to do that was quite i'm quite mechanically interested in things i
found particularly interesting so those bearings are always in a terrible state
they've got to be replaced in there about maybe 15 pounds of law that sort
of things it's not really a hugely expensive fix bearing houses are okay
they just need some grease and what have you and that we should then bring this
whole steering mechanism into its most efficient stage now think i'm getting
excited about with that is once that's all handled and running properly then I
can start looking out onto reassembling the autohelm which one . we have gone
from here
so basically that all be floating on bearings and that she will be very very
nice and the mangroves he's pretty stiff because i'm going to in there so there's
a sense of urgency now this section here is the actual writing posts and I can
use that as an emergency tiller in the event that the steering mechanism here
breaks this is a 19 teeth 19-2 throck 'it I seen that must be some sort of
motorcycle chain or something so if that did snap i could use this now you think
it'd be easy enough to find another till ahead to go on there but i was looking
online probably what seemed like five hours i cannot find a manufacturer of
these what I what I know is either rather heads or tell her heads the only
ones I can find off a westerly yacht and I don't think the same so if anybody
anywhere
No
those where you can buy these tiller heads especially the square face ones
will fit onto a post like that I would be very interested to hear from me
because i would like to have an emergency tiller for the things do go
wrong because as we know with boats things do go wrong on a boat so that's
what we're working on at the moment and we're in the process of getting all this
sorted now