Rain stopped play

We are still in Worcester. Denise returned on Monday from her weekend travel to a surprise 50th birthday do in Hampshire. We had planned to leave the marina today but the rain was pouring down so we decided to stay put. The new plan is to leave tomorrow, but the forecast isn't much better.

We had some "interesting" technical problems. Technical problems are often like that on narrowboats with everything being a bit of a compromise as nothing is really designed purely for canal conditions .

The first problem was the shower pump. We need a pump to remove water from our shower tray because it is a foot or two below canal level and so cant drain by gravity. On Saturday I was about to have a desperately needed shower, turned on the pump and nothing happened. First thought was a fuse which proved to be dead, so I replaced it, turned on the pump, and was rewarded by a bright blue flash and another dead fuse.

After discussion and advice from the marina engineers I was able to take the pump to pieces and found that the rotor which normally spins rapidly transferring water from the inlet to the outlet had broken. An arm had come off and was jamming the mechanism. Fortunately this is a well known problem and a replacement rotor was obtained from the marina. After everything was put together again it all worked - hooray, I am now clean.

The next problem is electrical. These are always a pain and are quite common - modern boat electrics are getting complex as they involve both 12V and 240V technology. Densie's electrical system was designed by a Polish electrical engineer and apparently was implemented to their military standards. Also of course electricity and water dont mix well.

The symptom was that during the heavy rain over the weekend the 240V supply repeatedly cut out for a second or two, during the few dry periods everything worked fine. Immediate thought was that this was a problem with the marina supply. However subsequent investigation led us to find an inch of rusty water in the bottom of the apparently sealed area where the external 240V supply is brought into the boat. Not good - rusty water and 240V certainly dont mix.

So, with the help of the marina engineers we are trying to discover where the water, presumably rain, is coming from. They have put some sealing around an inspection hatch - fortunately it is raining again and so we will find out if this fixes the problem.