A day spent tidying and cleaning Heronshaw and the Paxton Princess, inside and out, together with the surrounding space all after recent work, tackling the problem of connecting the autopilot to the Navstar navigator and plotter and buying a set of Addis plastic bowls, buckets and accessories for Heronshaw. Also refitting all of the cabinets and panels removed in the Paxton Princess for the engineers to do their work lately.
The Heronshaw bed was comfortable, and I slept well enough, waking at about 7.00am. Rather a slow routine this morning as I got up and made my morning tea and then ate a bowl of cereal and a couple of slices of toast. I took a bath and that also slowed me down somewhat until I got dressed and washed up, ready to start work. I opted to do a couple of hours physical work, moving all of the building blocks behind the shed and clearing up the gravel drive as best as I could. There was a lot of rubbish that I had left when last here and I felt that the place had to be tidied up a bit. I repaired the catch for the double gates after a fashion, and then opened up the pathway from in front of the garage where I will enter Heronshaw and park the car from now on. All this took a couple of hours after which I got myself a cup of coffee and made out my list of important telephone calls to make whilst I went shopping.
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I drove a little way towards Horning and got a reasonably-good reception for my cellular telephone on the top of the hill. I could not raise Diana and so checked my telephone messages remotely by bleeper but there were no messages of consequence. Then I called the marine electrical company and, in the absence of the normal contacts, got the help of another technician in interpreting the auto-pilot installation. I may try to do the calibration myself but still have to tackle the problem of connecting up the autopilot to the Navstar navigator and plotter. I also telephoned Steven Bloom, but he is busy laying turfs this weekend. On to Wroxham where did some shopping for supplies and I also bought a set of Addis plastic bowls, buckets and accessories for Heronshaw which I thought was very good value for £27. Lunch at a local cafe whilst reading my old faithful - the Eastern Daily Press - and then managed to contact Diana on the telephone as I drove back to Heronshaw.
It had started to rain whilst I was out and so I worked inside the bungalow for a while, hoovering and wiping surfaces until I had completely re-organised the lounge which looked really nice afterwards. Then out to clean the outside of the Paxton Princess which I did with buckets of water, detergent and scrubbing materials which was very tiring to use. I rinsed off with a hose as I went and worked on until late for tea at 6.00pm by which time I was very tired indeed. Had tea of cockles and crab which I had bought in Wroxham this morning and a piece of cake to follow. This evening, I worked inside the boat, re-fitting all of the cabinets and panels removed for the engineers to do their work lately. This took until 10.00pm during which time I had also vacuum-cleaned most of the inside as well. Inside to write up my journal and have a bath before getting to bed later than I would have liked.