Brighton Trip....

Although not by boat.... We'll get to that shortly though.

This past weekend was spent doing more prep work; Friday we visited the chap supplying our SSB system, as well as giving the Dickinson one final chance to work properly. Having cleaned it and checked the flow rate, all went well for 45 mins. About a minute later though, black smoke, orange / yellow flame and time to shut down again. Needless to say, it's now on ebay and I'm still bewildered as to how diesel cookers work. It's somehow not getting enough air, even though nothing has changed since it worked fine when we first installed it. Ah well...

Out came the kayaks instead and we went for a paddle, then grabbed our deliveries from Ikea and spent the day fitting them in the boat. In short (and because I forgot to get photos), our aft cabin wardrobe setup wasn't ideal, so we bought three 6 drawer units that (with a bit of adjustment), now make for some excellent storage space. I also wired in the second solar panel. Our shore power has been struggling to get the domestic bank up to 100% (maintains 92% instead and only the engines seem to get us up to 100% with a 14.4V charge) but with the second solar panel, we seem to be sitting pretty again. No idea what's causing it but hey ho, it works now.

Come Saturday, the forecast decided not to play ball for our trip to Brighton so we ended up driving over instead. Had a great walk around, visited the marina anyway, gave the Pier a once over then drove back in the evening.

On the way back, we stopped in at the chandlery to pick up our freezer (Waeco CF40) - I wanted to hold off until right before we left, but Waeco have changed their model line from tall and thin, to low and fat, and we needed an older model to fit into our galley.

Yesterday was then spent doing a bit of cleaning and tidying, before the working week started again.

We have good tides for a day sail this coming Saturday, so with the starboard engine getting it's new injector this Friday, we're going to head out and give the boat a solid 12hr bash. I'd like to get the Aries fitted as well, as it'll clear it out of the boat, and also firm up our design for the aft deck seating.

Anyway, 43 weeks to go and only 2.5 'til we're off to the Channel Islands.....