Recovering from my sea trip joining Freda and Alf for breakfast of bacon and tomato
Recovering from my sea trip joining Freda and Alf for breakfast of bacon and tomato

Recovering from my sea trip joining Freda and Alf for breakfast of bacon and tomato in Heronshaw again, catching up with Mum’s wheelchair problems and organising a swimming pool repair in Paxton. Tom Phillips arranged for a local firm to come and repair my coupling on The Paxton Princess as I undertook a range of repairs.

I slept well after the strains and exertions of the last few days and was a bit slow to get up this morning. In the end, I dressed and joined Freda and Alf for breakfast of bacon and tomato again. They have been doing fine these last few days and have received contracts and further information on the purchase of Redgrave Stores. The regional representative of the wholesalers visited them at Heronshaw and signed them up after briefing them on the service that they offered and so everything seems to be going ahead as planned. The news of Mum was not quite as good but at least Freda and Alf had managed to visit whilst I was away. She has had further trouble with her electric wheelchair as a circlip came off the wheel and was lost and she has also got a fixation about the possibility that somebody has stolen the pump from the fishpond. I found Tom Phillip's lifejacket left in the boat and so I telephoned Diana anyway and asked her to let him know. I had to use the radio/telephone as the cell net reception was too bad again.

** PRESS "Read More" BELOW for the complete story **

Yesterday, Di had contacted me on the cell net when I was a mile off Horsey in the North Sea with a panic over a swimming pool plumbing leak, but the reception is much worse here. I had told her how to switch of the pump and advised her that Mr Porter, our local plumber, was a better bet than Elm Leisure and she confirmed this morning that all was in hand. Tom Phillips had arranged for a local firm to come and inspect my coupling and they came this morning and confirmed what had happened and undertook to order and fit one as soon as possible. Later, Tom came to collect his life-jacket and brought back my RYA book, duly stamped and stickered to indicate that I had passed my Practical Day Skipper exam. He repeated how much he enjoyed the trip and felt that I had a good boat there.

Freda prepared me another nice lunch and then I worked on the boat. I took out the side panels in the saloon and removed the two water gauges so as to be able to free one and adjust the other to more accurately reflect the water levels in the two water tanks. Then, after a visit to the Wroxham chandlers to start looking at cabinet catches, I worked until after midnight removing the Port diesel fuel gauge and trying to adjust that to be accurate. Unfortunately, there was not enough clearance above the tank to remove it and so my labours were lost. At least I measured the tanks and came up with an accurate estimate of their capacity and made up a dipstick to use with the fuel. The weather was fine enough today, but there was still that breeze from the north-west.