Trillium's Trundlings...

Nice ending.  For now...

Very welcome, Deano...I should be in the marina at Paris Arsenal sometime around the end of May, beginning of June....(!) Concrete plans will come later...

I see from my Rank that I have been promoted to the exalted position of Freeman Laureate!!!

Thank you all very much...I just hope that it won't equate to being Promoted to Glory in the Salvation Army.....(!)

I wondered how long it would take someone to spot that

Ohhh... personal ranks.....  do they cost as much as a knighthood??

Depends what you want Chief doughnut maker would be free

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] wrote:I wondered how long it would take someone to spot that

I trust that's provisional pending supply of authenticated  photographs 

Having now had a chance to look carefully at the internal working of our beloved J type gearboxes, I have a question for Molemot.

Why when your rollpins sheared in the selector arm did you not just replace them with new after you extracted the old parts. By redrilling the cross shaft would that not have weakened it ?

Just wondering why you took the course you did, there must be a good reason with your engineering knowledge.

The original pins weren't rolpins...they were tapered hardened (I thought) steel pins, driven in to the cross shaft through the operating arm thingy, to secure the two parts together and thus allow the gearlever to rotate the cross shaft and the attached operating arm inside the gearbox that shifts the gear engaging mechanisms. These two pins had sheared...so the shaft didn't turn the operating arm and you couldn't select a gear. I managed to extract the remains of the two steel pins, but that left the end bits still firmly driven into the cross shaft...with no chance of getting them out! Since I didn't fancy my chances of drilling into hardened steel pins, I chose to rotate the shaft 90° and drill into the shaft there, using the holes in the operating arm as a drill guide. Worked perfectly, except I hadn't realised that the underside of the shaft had been machined away to allow the sliding bearing that works the over centre toggles to pass underneath.... So I managed to shear off the two pins AGAIN...!! Then when I minutely examined the nice example of exploded drawing in the manual, I finally saw that the shaft had a cutaway and all became clear. At this point, I had to rotate the shaft to the original position and try my hand at drilling into the remains of the pins....which, by dint of a brand new shiny drill bit, I managed to do. Then I also managed to refit the original steel pins...what was left of them...luckily, there was quite a bit of excess pin above the operating arm so I was able to do this.
You are quite right...it will have weakened the cross shaft; but since it has very little stress other than rotational, the major load is taken by the pins. I now have one original steel pin and one rolpin, as I couldn't extract one of the steel pins from the cross shaft !!! The last cruise showed no problem with the arrangement.

Thanks molemot, there's always a reason behind a thinking mans actions and you have proved the point

The reason I asked was I have been lucky enough (?) to pick up what appears to be a good S/H J type box for literally peanuts, too good to miss.
If nothing else I now have a "box" of bits as spares and by putting the actual gearbox and the manual together I have made sense of its whirly / geary innards !

One thing I did notice in (my) Manual is the service/dismantle instructions were obviously written prior to the excellent latest "exploded view" plates. The part numbers mentioned in the instructions are for earlier model, although the latest alternative numbers are given in the parts list. Its just a case of revising the text to suit the diagrams, and the whole thing becomes much simpler to understand.

My manual came with the boat...and includes a price list for all the parts!!! I have tried to get both Watermota and Sheridans to keep to the stated prices, but somehow they wouldn't....(!) As you say, the numbers take a bit of interpretation, but it's basically a pretty simple piece of machinery. When you find out how to get the cross shaft out of the gearbox casing, let me know, as that's the one thing I haven't managed yet....

IT'S been far too long....other things have intruded; various works on the Lotus, medical stuff, gardening, all sorts. Anyway, here we are again...briefly, as I have to be back in the UK to sort out chemo in a couple of weeks...so I thought poor old Trilly had been neglected, and Things Had to be Done.

Yesterday....I finally persuaded the corpus delicti to go an DO something. Got out to the boat, and shifted the stuff needed to access the left hand tank. Cushions, sidescreens, bucket, dumbell....then went to get out the Tank Emptying Kit. Found all the hoses....coiled in the bucket. The Jaguar V12 fuel pump and associated wiring is under the floor behind the engine........ah.

 Well, I would have sworn that's where it was.....but the more I looked, the more it wasn't there.

 In by one of the tanks?? Nope.

Under the other bit of the cockpit floor...AHA!! So THAT'S where the electrical polisher went....but no pump.

 Puzzled. Looked in tool locker in cabin. Nuffink. Bugger.

 Stop to think; thought; no bloody idea. Maybe I missed it?? So I went back and looked again....nope. Sod it; this was going to be a swift hour or so... Where can it BE??????????

 Peered at top of RH tank. Nothing there...except small plastic bucket full of rags.....!!!!!

Yup. You guessed it...pump was under the rags in the bucket. Power lead neatly wrapped around it.....I had put it there to stop any petrol draining out of it and into the bilge!!

Now we can start. Assembled the garden hose and the suction nozzle and the length of thin timber....thrust this into the LH tank...as you push, the timber bends and the end of the hose follows along the bottom of the tank right to the tap at the front. Connected hose to pump and pump output to 20 litre poly container....plugged her in. Gentle whirring sound and poly container starts to fill...peered at the first output, which is from the bottom of the tank..lowest bit..where any water would be...nuffink!!! Slight cheering sounds.

 Carried on until tank was empty...had to use another container as well, 5 litres this time. Had a Very Good Look at what had come out; pristine!!! Since last year was the Year of the Gloop, I was a lot happier!! Now to change the fuel tap...the old one was a bit leaky, and I had been given a spare; worthless swine that I am, I have forgotten which of our esteemed members donated this...but thanks!! whoever you are.

 So I unscrewed the old tap, thus proving the tank WAS empty....and had a good inspect of the replacement.

Now follows about half an hour (seemed like months) being contorted with hand down in tank bay, trying to a) screw the new tap into the tank and b) screw the fuel pipe onto the new tap. I had made sure that all the bits screwed together first...but would they now??? Would they buggery. Either the tap would screw into the tank but the pipe wouldn't go onto the tap, or the pipe would fit to the tap and I couldn't get the tap into the tank thread. It's all a matter of angles....unless it's ALL straight and in line, the threads won't engage, and the pipe is springy and difficult to align and....well, you get the picture. I had been there before...but that didn't seem to help. I was leaning on my bent left arm, and got pins and needles in the hand....gave up for a bit....then pressed on once more. In the end, I got the pipe loosely on the tap with the threads engaged, then managed to get the tap in the tank!!! Screwed the tap into the tank...and that action unscrewed the sodding thing from the pipe....AAAARRGGGHHH....!!! Anyway, it seemed like the way forward..;and on about the tenth agonising attempt IT WENT IN.... and I DID IT UP!!!!

Now to see if it leaks.......poured in 5 litres...no leak. So far, so good...so I added the other 20 litres and all was still well and I would have spliced the mainbrace but Trills doesn't have a brace of any sort and there was no rum anyway.... So I started on the RH tank. That pumped out perfectly, and the fuel was sparkly clean, so that went back in again.

Looks like the Magic Soltron Stuff I added last year has performed as advertised...no bacterial infection, no water, all is good.


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 I could have just started her up and not bothered...(!) but KNOWING is better that ignorance, as we are well aware. By now it was 1845 and I needed to do some shopping, so I reassembled the  boat and put up the hood and sidescreens and trundled off to the supermarket.  Today I shall start her up and do whatever is needed to the engine......better get weaving!!

Happy birthday for tomorrow....I'll have one for you over here 

Cheers, Prof!! Had a good lunch here; rest of day will be me getting quietly and gently stewed...like prunes...Here's "The Prune Song" by Frank Crumit!

Nowadays we often gaze on women over fifty
Without the slightest trace
Of wrinkles on their face.
Doctors go and take their dough to make them young and nifty.
But doctors I defy
To tell me just why

No matter how young a prune may be, it's always full of wrinkles.
We may get them on our face;
Prunes get them every place.
Nothing every worries them, their life's an open book.
But no matter how young a prune may be, it has a worried look.

Wrinkles, wrinkles, La la la la la

Every day, in every way, the world is getting better.
We've even learned to fly.
Days go passing by.
But what about the poor old prune?
His life is only wetter.
No wonder he can't grin
In the awful stew he's in.

No matter how young a prune may be, it's always full of wrinkles.
Now, we may get them here and there,
But pruneies get 'em everywhere.
Babies fret until they hear a mother's lullaby
But no matter how young a prune may be you'll never hear it cry.

In the kingdom of the fruits, the prune is snubbed by others.
And they are not allowed
To mingle with the crowd.
Though they're never on display with all their highbrow brothers
They never seem to mind.
To this fact they're resigned.

No matter how young a prune may be, it's always full of wrinkles.
Beauty treatments always fail;
They've tried all to no avail.
Yet other fruits are envious
Because they know real well
No matter how poor a prune may be
Hot water makes it swell.

Peaches and bananas have that skin you love to touch,
But no matter how fine a prune may be it don't amount to much.
Prohibition bothers us, but prunes don't sit and brood.
No matter how young a prune may be, it's always getting stewed.
No matter how young a prune may be, it's always full of wrinkles.
Baby prunes look like their dad,
Just not wrinkled quite as bad.
Prunes act very kind, they say, when sickly people moan.
But no matter how kind a prune may be, it has a heart of stone.


Always went down well, busking in Paris in 1980.....

LOL

Turns out I had more than one for you   
Hope you had a great day....I did

 
ONCE more, albeit fleetingly, we’re on the canals…..It’s been a weird old year. First, there were the floods on early season…these did for the river Loing and flooded several towns; Paris came close to inundation and the Canal de Loing had great chunks of it’s banks ripped away.
 
So much for the “get Trilly to Paris” plan. Nobody was going nowhere; not north of Briare to south of Paris, they weren’t. Hire cruisers were being taken by road to where they could actually cruise… The VNF were working like mad to sort out the damage…but it is only in recent weeks that the canal route from St. Mammès south through Briare returned to a navigable condition.
 
Meanwhile, Moley had been flitting about, hither and yon, being medicked for the pestilential prostate. So I’ve spent as much time as I could doing stuff…but far too much time commuting. This culminated in scans showing the thing had metastasised…so I shall be spending the winter in chemoland, Doctaxel here I come, six cycles of three weeks each, O Joy. Still, the Stampede trial shows for certain that early chemo works better then leaving it for the last ditch option…hence the Winter of Discontent coming up.
 
Before that, had to get away…if only fleetingly. When Trilly and I were both young, she was somewhere to run away to, away from the cares and strife and daily grind; going from bank to boat was like stepping into a better world, where the sun always shone and the beer was cold and there was always time for the evening sundowner. Now, things are different..;and there isn’t much to run away FROM in the first place…so the poor old girl doesn’t get the use she did in years past. Still, once I drag myself away from having to deal with the harsh realities and so forth, and finally Get On Board and cast off….she still works her magic, meandering through the verdant countryside among the heron and the water vole and the coypu….
 
I did finally manage to drag myself out of the chalet and loaded Trills for a brief voyage….un petit croisière, as they say here. So much stuff!!! She is pretty full, now; she already nhad 2 televisions, a home cinema system, a large fan, a fan heater, a parabolic TV antenna(amplified), and a freezer. To this we have added a George Foreman grill and a microwave oven. Not a lot of space for humans; but I just fit in…as long as I rearrange everything for Day or Night!! Btht fuel tanks had plenty of go juice, all the taps and piping was A-OK, gearbox now had two decent rollpins to secure the linkage to the selectors….the Frankencarb was set nicely…the filter seperator was filtering and separating…and I’d run out of excuses!! Alain of Charmes Nautiques hire cruiser yard lets me use his customers car parking …it’s a field beside his house…so with Viv-the-Volvo comfortable, we were ready to go. Just got to fill the water tank…
 
So I did…then tried the tap. Nothing; nada; rien … dry as the Sahara. Blast!!! So one final thing to do…get the domestic water system up and running. Opened the cupboard under the tap….where the wiring is from the tap microswitch to the water pump up forward where my flexy water tank is.
Peered in.
Confronted by a slurry of unidentifiable muck, speckled with bits of colour….hmmm…
Started to take the stuff off the top shelf. Ah. I see…some blasted rodent had eaten it’s way through my HP sauce and my tomato ketchup and most of this had spilled out and solidified!! Uurrgh. The colour came from the plastic container which had held Poulain drinking chocolate…which had added itself to the slurry. Out with the shelf, got it ashore, hosed it down and gave it a good scrubbing. The peered into the cupboard again….and saw the reason the pump wasn’t running…remember the water pump? That’s what started all this in the first place….cursed rodent had eaten through one of the wires….stripped the ends, twisted them together, turned on the tap….and water gushed forth merrily, no need to bleed the system, and that was the water system up and running. Much clearing up and disposing of detritus…and some wonderfully out of date foodstuffs, Sauce Bearnaise from 2007, would you believe….and got the other shelves out and cleaned and back in again and new condiments and tins in place. By then I had got too late to contemplate departure…so I spent the night in the boatyard. The following morning I finally fired her up and let her warm up before setting off.
 
Don’t have long for this cruise…and no point in trying to go far, anyway, on the ferry on October 2^nd….so I decided to meander off southward, over the Pont Canal and along the long lockless pound from Briare to Maimbray. It was whilst the old girl was beginning to shoulder ther responsibilities and come to terms with the prospect of Going Somewhere, that one of the local trip boats came past. By now it was lunchtime…and they do a Lunchtime Cruise, over the Pont Canal so the old dears can look out over the Loire whilst chomping on their caneton à l’orange….. the proprietor has a standing deal with most of the old folk’s homes in the vicinity, a sort of captive audience…..but he mooches along at the speed of an arthritic snail….so I seized the day, as it were, cast off and set off in hot pursuit!! I passed him going through the Port de Commerce…got to the start of the Pont Canal… and there was one of Alain’s day boats, “Ping” or “Pong” coming across. Rule is, first boat on has precedence…so I was stuffed anyway. Shuffled about, as you do, waiting for him to get over and clear…as he emerged from the bridge I went for it….but there was yet another boat, just got on at the far end…..!! More shufflings…and finally the cruise got under way, I was on the bridge; Trilly was purring, the sun was in the sky, the tourists were waving as we passed, the Loire was shimmering in the sunshine, a gentle breeze wafted past; time for a cold beer?? Be a fool not to. So opened the fridge under the seat and got out a coldie…two swallows might not make the summer, but they sure help it along a bit on a hot day.
 
Across the Pont Canal and through the greenery of the countryside….mile after uninterrupted mile…the odd jogger (le jogging is still popular hereabouts)… an occasional fisherperson…and we gently passed over the glassy surface of the canal, leaving a few ripples, slowly decaying, to mark our passage. No plan; no defined destination….so when we came to Chatillon sur Loire and I was hailed from a large motoryacht flying one of those defaced blue ensigns that means they are superior to thee and me (or at least the think so) I went astern and we had a chat. Registered in London was this magnificent beastie…and the owner and his wife were busily cleaning fenders as they had friends coming to visit!! I was more than usually glad that I had swapped the foul and filthy harbour lines and fenders for the cruising kit….all shiny and  proper Bristol fashion!! There was a pontoon mooring close by, so I asked if it was available..and it was…so end of first day’s cruise. Got plugged in to the electricity…batteries on charge…parted with 9€50 to Madame la Capitaine du Port….tried out the microwave on a packet of chicken wings, Spanish style….a success!! A couple of bourbon and cokes, nicely chilled with ice from the feezer, and I settled down with some P.G. Wodehouse for company….and so to bed.
 
The next day, the forecast was for rain, starting between 1100 and 1400….so an earlyish departure and we were away at 0945. This time I’d done some sums, and decided on Belleville as my destination…should do that easily by the time the rains came; should be all buttoned up and snug. One lock to negotiate…went through it behind two hire boats, all in a cat’s cradle of knitting masquerading as lines…I just floated behind them with the odd prod from the engine to keep station. The it was a gentle run for a couple of miles to Belleville. It’s a pretty place, the moorings are nicely gardened and quite tranquil. Got moored, up with the hood, a lunchtime snack and then the heaven’s opened, as prophesied…drops the size of golf balls splishing and splashing everywhere….Trilly stayed dry and cosy. Things dried up as the day wore on….i got the microwave fired up and had Boeuf  Bourguignon and tagliatelles for supper; the cocktails were cold, and everything was rosy.
 
Came the dawn….chilly, or what? Rearranged the cabin into Day Mode and boiled a kettle for the ablutions…still got to plumb up the hole in the calorifier, but I seem to have lost the original copper pipe that went from the manifold to the injector bend….that route now goes through the calorifier to heat the water, so disconnecting it has to mean reinstating the engine cooling circuit. Anyway, got a kettle….so had hot water for a wash and a shave. By then the day had dribbled past to 1215…and I needed to do some shopping…and the supermarket shuts at 1230 for lunch. Too late!!! So I settled down to take care of emails and so forth….after brunch.
 
The French know nothing of the wonders of bacon…or the great British breakfast at all, thy shave weedy little crescenttypastrythingies with jam and a bowl of coffee…. So it is incumbent on any cruising Brit, who might fancy a sort of substitute fry up, to cater for it beforehand. Carrying bacon and sausages can be done…I have some in the freezer at Mole End…but difficult on a boat, especially when you hadn’t thought of it!! It being still pretty chilly, a fry up sounded an excellent idea….this may seem sacrilege…but I had a small tin of SPAM!!! (pause for the Viking chorus…) This, cut into 4 slices and fried until the exterior is crispy, added to a fried egg and some fried bread, with a croissant and some Frank Cooper’s Vintage Oxford on the side, is as close as one needs to a Great British Fryup when I foreign parts….so brunch was consumed.
 
Once the clock had ticked round to 1430… a good old clockwork clock, it came from the telephone exchange manual switchboard at Emberbrook, near Surbiton, when my Dad was in charge of changing to from manual to STD automatic….anyhoo, time for the shops. Better look in on the tourist office and pay the mooring fee; it was closed yesterday……but now it was open! Madame told me that there was a new policy, and everything was free. Moorings, water, electricity, help yourself, no charge. Imagine THAT on the Thames……..!!
 

Off to the supermarket, did a bit of shopping, had a chat with some Americans on a Le Boat hire cruiser, and back to Trilly. By now it had got to be pretty late in the day, and since it was free to be here, here I still am. Will probably move tomorrow…….

Excellent entertaining report as always. Thanks. Good read. But as you'll have seen from our nouveau membre, Jean Philippe, the way to go looks like it has to be YouTube video(s)! So, next cruise?

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] wrote:

Trilly Trundles on….

 
Madame told me that there was a new policy, and everything was free. Moorings, water, electricity, help yourself, no charge. Imagine THAT on the Thames……..!!

Nope, that'll never work, there'll be a narrowboat there by the end of the week that won't leave for months

Alas, Stephen...I'm not a filmic type. My muse has to content itself with prose....don't even have a camera on board! I find one can either enjoy the moment or take photographs...and I prefer the former to the latter. Not one of the "selfie" generation, me..... As for narrowboats; Not many of them over here, but there are a few. In front of me is a liveaboard on an old ex-hire cruiser, one of the ones that look like water beetles with their surround of fenders, forward steering and front deck with semicircular seating. He's been here for a while...I often see him bimbling past Mole End en route to his next temporary resting place. I think the boat lives in Briare for the winter. During the winter months, the canals close for maintenance and this bit gets drained down for weeks, so nobody goes anywhere; it is the time of "hivernage" ...wintering...and all good boaters find some convenient watery spot to take care of their vessels. Which is why I have never moved mine to the canal by Mole End....she'd be sitting on the bottom for a few weeks, and heaven knows what's down THERE...!! It's a nice sunny day here at Belleville; I've topped off the water tank and washed down the dirtier parts of the topsides I couldn't get at at my moorings in Briare, so she's looking pretty chipper. Another relaxing day in prospect...if I go any further up the canal, I shall be at home; past that lies St. Thibault for Sancerre, and the electricity is a bit uncertain, and its a 4 or 5 hour run. So, all in all, I think I'll leave here tomorrow and proceed very gently in the direction of Briare, the Port du Plaisance (pleasure boat harbour) and getting Trilly winterised before I go off to the UK next Sunday to be scientifically poisoned in the name of survival!! Roll on next spring....

How can one make a gentle cruise into a must read missive ? Ask Moley !!

Good luck with the cancer treatment MM

I agree with Derek, another great read from Moley. Thanks.

Best wishes from Texas for your forthcoming treatments, hope it all goes to plan.

Having experienced how my wife endured the debilitating effects of chemo treatment recently, I wish you well and a speedy recovery.

Another rambling account of my doings...2017 and still going...


Trilly has been trundling again….(!) One of the conditions of the mooring in Briare is that you have at least 14 days out of the Port during the season. Normally this isn’t a problem…but I have been having the worst year I can remember. 2017, annus horibilis, for sure. It all began with six months of chemotherapy for the purulent prostate…started October last year…and went on until March 2017, when I was able to move out of the rented bedsit and back to Mole End Cottage, my little chalet on the mainland.
Dragged everything out of the rented hovel and into the trusty Volvo estate. This included the latest in a long line of exercise bicycles….I had given up running in 1982, on the recommendation of Dr. Douglas Vollan , who I had met in Auxerre in 1981 and joined his merry band of sailors the following year. He said If I carried on running I would ruin all the leg joints, the pounding would do for them, so since then I have worn out three exercise bicycles. This latest one was an eBay purchase, £25 for a very advanced model with electromagnetic loading and heart rate monitor, so forth. I was loading this into the Volvo when the heavy bit slipped and smacked into my shins, ripping some skin away….this was to have later repercussions. Anyhoo, got everything in the Volvo and set off for Dover…ferry to Calais, hotel overnight and dined at my favourite Calais restaurant, the “Sole Meuniere” and then off to Mole End Cottage the next day, a Sunday, as trucks are banned from the autoroutes on Sundays and driving is much more relaxing.
When I drove up to Mole End, I opened the gates and noticed that there was water coming out from under the garage doors and dripping from the terasse….a premonition of doom….when I unlocked the upstairs accommodation and went in, it was to a scene of disaster…during the freeze in February, a pipe had frozen and burst. Although I had turned the water off when I left the property, as I always do, it turned out that it had needed another 5 or 10 degrees of turn to get the stopcock to stop, cock (!) and the water had been dribbling out of the broken pipe for the previous two months. I discovered the need to turn it a bit further when I finally got the waters to stop flowing by doing exactly that. It had flooded the kitchen, and the hallway, and the toilet, and the bathroom…but not the lounge and bedrooms. The water had drained through the floors and saturated the hardboard ceiling and walls of the workshop downstairs, where the Lotus lurks….she was filthy, having been dribbled on by the filthy water coming through from above.
Being in a post-chemo state, this was all a bit much.
My neighbour, realising something was wrong, arrived with mop and bucket and laid into the devastation upstairs, sluicing water out of the front door….I joined in and between us we got the floors dryish.  There was no water, and no electricity as the waters had tripped the cut outs… I turned in for the night in a state of abject misery.
The following day I went through the electrics and isolated which circuit was making the cut outs trip…it was the workshop lighting; no surprise as the fluorescent lights were all full of water….once I had that circuit switched off I could use the rest of the electrics. In France, ring mains are illegal; everything comes from spurs with individual circuit breakers.  A plumber turned out and found the burst pipe and fixed it…but there was still a leak from the gas water heater, so he left that isolated from the mains water. So I now had cold water and electricity, and the house had heating and entertainment and was liveable. This was in March…
 
My wounded leg didn’t seem to want to heal, so I finally dragged myself off to casualty in the local hospital, where the wounds were dressed, I was read the riot act (!) and arrangements were made for regular visits from the district nurse team to ensure that the mess sorted itself out. This took several weeks, after which the skin had regrown and the leg was pronounced mended! I celebrated with a drive in the Lotus….when I got out, I biffed the shin on the loudspeaker in the driver’s door and opened it up AGAIN, so it was back to the nurse visits….
Things dragged on, as they do…insurance assessors etc. and a payment from the insurance company…then I found it difficult to get anyone to do the required work at a reasonable price. I had a quotation to fix the water system of €4440…(!) As the year wore on and the effects of the chemo wore off, I decided to have a look at the gas water heater myself.  At this point, three plumbers had told me it was too old to be able to source spare parts…..I looked at it and fond that the cover plate on the water valve had been cracked by the ice and that was the leak.  An hour or so of internet research and I had sourced a new cover plate…this was delivered two days later…I fitted it and the hot water system was sorted and once more functional, for €45….rather cheaper than the plumber’s estimate!! Also as the year wore on, the workshop dried out….by August it was once more sanitary.
Being parked in a puddle under a waterfall hadn’t done the Esprit Turbo any good; on a jaunt back to the UK the cooling fans expired and the wiring to them and the fan relay caught fire! That took a bit of fixing, finding suitable fans involved grovelling in a scrapyard removing them from three dead Fiesta/Escort wrecks, and a bit of rewiring too. I still need to adjust the fans relative to the radiator and their cowlings….
My next trip back to the UK was in the trusty Volvo estate; as usual, I was travelling on a Sunday to avoid the trucks on the autoroutes. Everything went well until we had passed the last Peage before Paris…then we were bowling along merrily at 130kph , when something let go. Speed fell away and a glance in the mirror showed we were being followed by a huge cloud of smoke; the engine had decided to burn all the lubricating oil…. Since the old girl was 17 years old and had done 150,000 miles it was a no brainer write off. I nursed her to the next motorway rest area…a mile before it the oil pressure warning light came on….and we made it to the carpark of MacDonalds. I wasn’t going to make the ferry that day!! Fortunately I had the laptop and much Googling and emails and phoning later I found someone prepared to tow the Volvo away to a scrapyard on a Sunday, and it was just as expensive as you might have thought… the day developed into the tow truck taking me to Orly airport so I could rent a car, and then to a bank so I could extract a huge wad of Euros from the hole in the wall…then transhipped everything from the Volvo to the hire car, after which I drove back to Mole End Cottage for a rather miserable evening.
The next day I returned the hire car and got a taxi to the bus station in Paris, a bus to London via the Tunnel and another taxi from Victoria coach station to where I was staying. Now I needed a new car…..and bought a Peugeot 407 diesel estate; this had a duff electronic display unit so I negotiated  the price down quite a bit. Once I had done everything I needed to in the UK, I drove the Peugeot back to where it had come from…France! Got a new display unit from eBay and fitted that and the latest transport is proving herself to be spot on, so far. Had to find a name for her…Peugeot… “Peu” is French for small…”Geot” is pronounced “Jo”…thus “Little Jo” and hence she is “Josette”!!   
By now, the true effect of the flood was becoming clear…the floors that had been inundated were giving way. It turned out that they were particle board and were now sagging between the joists, the flooring would have to be replaced….and it took a lot of finding to get someone to do this. I finally found a local firm prepared to tackle it, and work was scheduled to start on October 10^th. Wanting to have a bolt hole to bolt to in the event of Mole End being temporarily uninhabitable, I had hit on the idea of taking Trillium to Mole End and mooring to the canal bank by the cottage…so this year’s excuse for a cruise was to be much the same as the past two.
 
I loaded Trilly with everything I thought I’d need for a couple of weeks…changed the lines and fenders to the cruising set, gave her a bit of a clean and fired up the engine. It would NOT run smoothly; even after fitting the new coil and ballast resistor which was her this year’s present. I had the float needle valve stick open….caught that before too much petrol had dribbled out…and went through all the usual carburettor stuff, but still there was the misfire. I took the plugs out…and found that 2 and 3 were working but 1 and 4 were just sooty and were obviously misfiring. Searching through the Dead Plug Locker, I found two brand new Champion plugs…so they went into 1 and 4. After this the misfiring went away…(!) On a Wednesday morning we set off….and she was running nicely…over the Pont Canal and along the long lockless pound and stopped at Chatillon sur Loire.  A pleasant spot with good facilities, they do charge but it’s very reasonable…I gave Trilly a bit of a clean, got two thirds of her looking nice, at least. I noticed that my wounded-but-healed shin was still sloughing off dead skin from when it had been covered with dressings for months…I gave it a bit of a tug and it came away, revealing a nasty looking hole underneath! I scrutinised the ship’s firs aid kit and found an Elastoplast that was almost big enough, so stuck that on. After Chatillon it was onwards by one lock to Belleville..here everything is free. Unbelievable, but true…showers, toilets, water, electricity, moorings…and now free wifi as well. I had been here for a couple of days when the gas ran out.
Trilly has the standard continental gas bottle; back in 1996 I had done a refit in Auxerre and changed the gas bottle box to accommodate the larger gas bottle. I had done some careful measurement and these bottles will just fit above the grease cup on the rudder shaft and below the varnished plywood cover. A local engineering firm in Kew made up a flat pack gas bottle box to my dimensioned sketch, and I assembled it onto the boat in Auxerre using pop rivets and epoxy. I used the original exhaust opening in the hull as the vent for the gas bottle box, and relocated the exhaust itself off to the port side of the transom. I remember using a hole saw and a hand drill to make the hole; not something I’d recommend, but back then we had no mains electricity…I’d only arrived back in France the previous year and hadn’t got sorted out yet.  Now, the continental gas bottle is a weighty thing; so I extracted it from it’s lair and got out the collapsible trolley and the elastic luggage straps and secured the two together, then plodded off to the local supermarket for gas and shopping…. Got some larger plasters for the wounded shin. My usual summer cruise has been six weeks, and I find that I have to change the bottle every 4 weeks; it’s the gas fridge that uses most of the gas….unsafe, according to the BSS, but it’s been fine ever since I bought Trilly in 1978. One has to do annual inspections and look after things, one year I found that the flexible pipe from the bottle regulator had cracked!!!
 
After a couple more days relaxing, I left Belleville to do the short run to my little chalet, one lock further on. Got moored outside my place… Mole End Cottage, I call it…and it has moles, too!! Then ran the mains cable to a socket in the workshop and made sure that Trilly was securely fastened to long mooring spikes, as we still get proper commercial peniches here, as well as hire boats and hotel barges and private craft. The next few days were spent supervising the artisans as they ripped out the soggy flooring and replaced it with new and covered it all in vinyl tiles. This took them 2 ½ days… after which the job was done, and I was no longer in any danger of descending into the workshop by the short route… So back to boating!!
 
Last Saturday I wound in the mains lead, fired up the engine, extracted the mooring spikes and set off on a beaut sunny day, heading for Briare and Trilly’s moorings. We were bumbling along nicely until we came to a bridge, and there was a large barge coming the other way; not going to argue with that, so I closed the throttle. I glanced down at the instruments and saw that the temperature was going up…well, the water flow was bound to be less at idle….but the temperature kept on going up…more throttle in neutral didn’t help…up it went to 100C +…higher still…..the barge had gone and I made a beeline for the bank. Shut the engine down and got moored.
Bugger.
And it had started such a nice day, too….
First thing was to check the inlet water filter; that was clean and opening the sea cock with the top off produced a satisfactory impression of a fountain…. Then I undid the pipe from the head to the exhaust manifold water jacket, started the engine, and no water came out. At this point I reckoned I knew what had happened, undid the four screws holding the cover plate on the water pump and six bits of rubber fell out; so much for the impeller!! Didn’t have a spare, but do have two other pumps…the original, and a new plain bearing pump that I had replaced by the ball race pump. So I searched the boat…every nook and every cranny…no pumps. Did find the old front bunk light that had evaded me before, but no pump.
Must be in the workshop…it’s about two miles away..got the ship’s bicycle, but the tyres are flat…..hmmmm. So I phoned the local taxi man, he came within minutes took me back to Mole End, I dashed into the workshop, into my machine shop where I found the two pumps in a poly bag, waiting for me to have a bash at fitting new bronze bush bearings to them. All I needed was a spare impeller, right? Back to the taxi, back to the boat, dismantled one pump and extracted the impeller.  Now to fit it in place of the dead one….but it wouldn’t go onto the shaft… At this juncture it was revealed that the ball race pump has a larger diameter shaft than the plain bearing pump; so neither of my intact impellers was going to fit, I would have to change the entire pump. So I reassembled the old pump, which wasn’t easy as I had taken the shaft out and the O ring slinger had come off….(!) Still, got it back together and fitted it to the engine, even managed to get the offset drive right!! Did everything up again, started the engine, peered over the transom and water was coming out of the exhaust!! Great…. Turned around and found that water was squirting all over the place…I had forgotten to do up the pipe from the head to the manifold…. An easy fix; after which I let her run for a while and everything was fine….so on to the lock. Finally.
 
When I got to Belleville lock, it was full of water…I hailed and some lads who were fishing dashed to open the gates for me, and in I went. No Lock keeper…the lads didn’t know where he was….a local looked at the lock hut and found a note with a couple of phone numbers…he rang and got machines both times.  I got the numbers and tried myself…machines. Blast it…. I was trying to get back to Briare to dine at the Petit St. Trop’ restaurant, I moor a few steps away so I pop in and out from time to time, and I wanted to celebrate my new floor!! In the end, a van arrived with the lock keeper who had been shepherding a peniche up through the next lock downhill, which was why he hadn’t been at Belleville. At least, we were away now!! I checked the lock closing times, and the keeper confirmed they were open until 1900, so I still ought to make it…
 
Next lock; Maimbray. There was a hire boat in there already…but no keeper…..but we know where he is, don’t we, Billy?? Yes, we do, Johnny…. And after a while he turned up in his van and we went down through the lock and along the 12km lock free pound across the Pont Canal to the descending flight into the Port de Plaisance in Briare….at this point I had it made, so I phoned the restaurant and Florence told me they were full!! So I wheedled…the tale of my failed water pump and taxi ride etc. worked, and she said she could squeeze me in somewhere! Down through the locks, got moored, had a rapid ablute and locked Trilly up to walk to the restaurant where an aperitif was howling my name; and that, dear readers, was Trilly’s 2017 cruising exploits. I have ordered a new impeller, so the water pumping stuff will be OK for next year, when I am determined to get back to Paris….like I have been intending every year since 2004!! “Next year…PARIS!!” it’s becoming a battle cry….

Phew! That was a value-for-money good read! Thanks.
What I want now is the Google Maps shortcuts to see all these places on Streetview. You've painted a great picture, Streetview will complete the experience. Not the shin of course - be more careful.