Bartimaeus

It was a bit cooler yesterday morning so I decided it might be worth putting some of the windows back in.  Once I started, I remembered that it was necessary to put them back in the right frames or they don't shut properly.  Having taken all five out at one point, I worked out that just trying all combinations could require as many as 120 attempts to get it right.

There were only three out this time and it only took a couple of swaps for me to conclude that all the windows would now shut.  I decided to mark the windows so that in future it would be simple.  I devised a simple schematic and used a permanent marker to write it on the top edge of each window.

The symbols I settled on relied on marking the bow of the boat and the six window positions  : : : > and then putting a bigger mark for the window in question.

We'd been in Stourport for a few days before I realised just how close we were to the Ortomarine headquarters - and that we'd never actually been there.  We are at about the closest the canal gets to the small industrial estate where they build boats.  I also spotted that there was a good quality bike route most of the way there and an interesting tea room a short distance away.

This morning I phoned to make sure there would be someone there to meet us, and asked if we could pick up some paint that had been previously mentioned.  By the time we set off the weather was warm enough that I removed two of the windows to keep the boat cool while we were away, confident that I could put them back later.

I thought I knew where I was going, but it turned out that there are two bike routes crossing the canal within a few hundred metres.  We hadn't gone far when I realised we needed to retrace our steps and find the right one.  The sun was high, but for the most part the route was in the shade of trees and on traffic-free paths or narrow lanes with mainly considerate drivers.

The tea shop at Cutnall Green lived up to expectations, and we both left enough room for an ice cream sundae.

When we arrived at Ortomarine HQ we were warmly welcomed.  There was no formal bike parking available, but there was plenty of space inside the unit.

We said a quick hello to Sean and had useful conversations with Caroline, Rob, Kerrie, Paul and Simon.  Rob solved an outstanding puzzle about the displayed State of Charge (SOC) that has been bugging me.  It turns out that the shunt which measures the battery state had not been properly configured, so it was underestimating the capacity of our batteries by an order of magnitude.

We also established that Nick and Andy are not available to commission the heat pump until at least the end of the month, and that Rob is still having difficulty with communicating with the device, but has a spare one in the unit to experiment on.

I discussed some details of the way the control panel works with Simon too - we can expect some improvements to be installed in the coming days.

By the time we were ready to leave, we had two tins of paint which we can use to touch up some of the internal woodwork where sap from knots has stained through.  We also had some pipe lagging to put round all the exposed pipes in the cupboard space around the heat pump.  I had to remove the additional shelf I constructed yesterday morning to fit some of that, but I had designed it with such access in mind.

We also arranged for Paul to come to us tomorrow morning to do a small job.  We assured him that he would be able to use the pub car park, but at his request we had a drink there this evening and confirmed that would be alright.  An excellent way to round off a useful day.