Monday 20 May 

We have a bit of a lie in.  But the situation is improving.  The sun has even come out.  Well at least for a few minutes.  By the time I get up it has clouded over again, but it still is a great improvement on yesterday.

After a shower we break our fast with a nice big bowl of porridge.  That really fills me up.  First thing to do for the day is to try to find a heating engineer to look at the heating system.  At about 9:30 am Richard finally gets hold of the local agents for our heating system only to find out that their only heating engineer is on holiday this week.  That sounds like our luck.  Richard then gets hold of the people who installed the heating.  On the phone one of their engineers instructs Richard on how to get diagnostics on the set up and he says it has cut out because there is insufficient voltage.  That makes no sense because we are on shore power and have three new batteries.  The engineer suggests we run the engine for a while and try again.  So Richard does that, but there is no luck, except that another fault code comes up on the control panel.  So Richard rings them again and this time gets a much more helpful engineer.  He says the electricity issue is historic and certainly the heating did turn off for lack of power when we were in Newport at the beginning of the month.  The new code shows that some unburnt diesel has lodged in the system.  The engineer explains to Richard in great detail how to correct it, so he will try.

While he is doing that I guess I might as well make the most of my extra day in Guernsey by doing some laundry.  We have been out for less than a week, but the sheets could use changing and we seem to have a bag full of dirty clothes.  So I trot off to the Marina laundry room and do a couple of loads.  We do need the clothes because we are running out of long sleeved tops.  We didn’t pack for this cold weather.

When I get back to the boat I find Richard doing the last bit to fix the heating and it seems to work.  It does make the heater chuck out huge amounts of smoke, but apparently that is a good thing.  Anyway the boat gets very warm, so lets hope for the best. 

I make yet another trip to the shops to get food.  We have lunch and finish the puzzles in the Times.  This should be the last time we can buy the paper. We hope we might get enough WIFI to download the paper.  The Marina WIFI is set up not to allow anyone to download things!  

It is now nearly high tide and everyone is thinking about leaving so we guess we will go to.  First we go to the fuel pontoon to top up with duty free diesel.  I suggest we check the gas bottle and get new if necessary, but Richard is certain that won’t be necessary.  Then off to the outside pontoons where we will spend the night.  At least we are getting this fourth night free!

I decide to do a new recipe for the boat.  So we have a steak dinner and I make bread and butter pudding.  Guess what, yes the gas runs out in the middle of cooking dinner.  Now it is too late to buy cheap and convenient gas.  Typical.  The desert turns out very well, but I don’t think it is a practical dish for cooking on board as it needs to bake for 50 minutes.

Now it is getting late and we have a very early start in the morning.  5:00am has been mentioned.  So we hope to start the heater and go to bed.  The heater is still not quite right.  As I write Richard is doing his clearing bit on it again.

Yes, it worked and we had a nice warm night.