Bartimaeus

We moored up quickly at Linton and made a dash for the pub – Wednesday is curry night!  Unfortunately we were too late for food orders, so we had to make do with a drink and a chat.  I sidled over to Phil and told him how pleased I was to see him.  When we’d been coming in the other direction I’d noticed that he had a good sense of humour, and was pretty handy at sorting out engine problems.  He was suitably sceptical about my joy in seeing him, but listened with interest as I described the problem.

I told him I thought it was probably a minor thing, so he quite reasonably asked how come I hadn’t already fixed it myself.  He promised to have a look, but couldn’t be sure to find time before Friday.  He also recommended we book ourselves in for dinner on Thursday night.  I complained that he was condeming us to sit around all day and enjoy the sunshine, but he showed no remorse.

Phil had pointed out that where we were moored, the trees would shade our solar panels, so In the morning I got out early to take us through the lock.  I bumped in to Phil again who suggested we initially move to the floating lock jetty so as not to bother the fishermen.  He said he’d come and have an initial look in a short while.

Less than an hour later he had appeared with his toolbox.  It didn’t take him long to get the control panel off and extract the cable that controls the engine speed.  As expected, this was the root of the problem.  What Phil was surprised by was that it had snapped at the motor end, so it needed to be replaced.  He put everything back together again while I set about ordering a cable for delivery the next day.

While Phil was working, I had also had an email from Rob at Ortomarine.  He had made progress on a couple of minor issues that needed to be resolved and wanted to send us some parts.  I checked that we could have those sent to the pub, and also asked Rob if he had a suitable cable to send.  He didn’t have a cable, but did give me a link to allow me to be sure of ordering the right thing.  Before Phil had finished, two parcels were scheduled.

Less than an hour later, Phil reappeared with a cable.  He wasn’t certain he had one, and hadn’t want to promise anything.  The cable he had was longer than needed, but the extra couple of feet just curve around in the engine bay.  He was even faster getting everything open the second time.  With the new cable in place we fired up the engine and confirmed that everything was fully functional.  What a fantastic service – thanks Phil!

It was a relief to have the cable fixed so promptly, but I also realised that it could have snapped at any time.  In the last few weeks there have been a number of times when the engine dropping to tick over would have been more than just a nuisance.

We moved to the fixed moorings once the fishermen had packed up for the day.  After lunch I suggested we take the tandem to the shop at Tollerton (no other shops are available).  By then some more fishermen had set up who were slightly in the way of getting the tandem up the bank.  I had expected to wheel up slowly on a diagonal, but one of the fishermen simply picked up the frame and got us to the top in no time.  The same guy helped me back down on our return.

On Friday, the first parcel arrived from Rob.  It contained the replacement waste tank meter which can wait for another day.  The other item is a replacement HMI (human machine interface) control panel unit.  The panel is a major feature of an Ortomarine boat.  It lives above the back step and allows us to monitor and control many things on board.  I uploaded a minor modification a week or two ago and it has misbehaved since.

The unit mostly works correctly,  It is this, for example, that turns the inverterer off when we don’t need it, and back on when the fridge is too warm.  What stopped working was the display – oddly the screen still works, it allows me to talk to the underlying system, but not to access the customised controls.  We can also access the panel using our phones, and this functionality was still working.  Clare found it a pain that she had to get her phone out to turn the power on when she wanted to boil the kettle, but it wasn’t a disaster.

It was a simple job to replace the unit so the panel now works again.  We can still access the screen from our phones while aboard too.  Unfortunately some sofware licensing restriction means we can’t now access the HMI remotely when we are out of range of the boat WiFi.  Rob hopes to resolve that soon.

It was a duller day, so I also spent some time setting up and transferring things to my new laptop.  I have confirmed that I can use it to reprogram the HMI.  I held my breath as the upload finished and it rebooted.  I don’t normally watch and wait for it to switch to the custom program, but after a few tense seconds it worked perfectly.

The throttle cable arrived in the afternoon and has been stowed as a spare.  The previous one was five years old, we shouldn’t need it for at least that long.

Threats of heavy rain in the coming days turned our thoughts to safe moorings.  On Saturday we set off downstream again.  Immediately after setting off we encounter red buoys.  These are meant to be kept on our starboard side (going downstream).  Fortunately Phil had told me that one of them had been recently dragged out of place – keeping the other side of it would have been quite a challenge.