Sniffling and pottering

Well despite his dose of man flu, the captain soldiered on. Just not very actively. A trip to the Deere dealer for oil and filters and fuel additive was OK, as was the regulation run around the bay to warm up the oily bits in the engine room. Our usual less than exciting track ensued:

You cannot go too far "left" in the picture as it gets very very shallow.

The nice dose of man flu rather put paid to some other mad ideas that the captain had - like replacing the Racor spin on filter assembly that is used as on the wing engine with a "proper" Racor turbine style unit like the one on the genset. The engine room was too chilly for a sniffling person to work in. Copy / paste outside jobs. So, in reality, not much got done. We did make some progress, but not of our own labours just via our bank account.

The RIB cover (10 years old now) had a split in a seam and as the rest of it was starting to look sad, we had ordered a new one from Josh at Severn Sails.. He duly arrived to fit it and a much better job it is too. Better size, covers the tubes more effectively, straps with the buckles on the side you can get to easily not against the rail etc etc. Here is his handiwork:

The new cover is a way better fit around the stern and outboard and secured with a big strap this time. The RIB tubes at the stern are properly covered and should keep much cleaner. Even the belly straps are nicely reinforced and fitted:

Very pleased with this and also a little cover he made up to protect the FLIR from the worst of the winter weather:

and there has been plenty of that....

Realistically, the last few days felt a bit like a wasted time - there is a huge and growing "to do" list of things that we want to finish before the cruising season starts and we didn't even dent it in the last couple of weeks, bar changing the main engine gearbox oil and filter. Just have not felt up to doing much. Time to man up and get on with things, sniffing gently of course. We did cheer ourselves up seeing Anne and Izzy though. Izzy looked her usual regal, cute self:

Pick your own words to describe how Anne looked:

The good news is that this cold / flu thing seems to have infected plenty of folks in our area and it started way before the current Coronavirus scares. Otherwise we would have to self-isolate on board. Mmmm. We have wine, gin, a freezer full of food and a few tins / packets of edible stuff kicking around. Seeing the mad panic buying going on in the supermarkets here it is so tempting to anchor somewhere in a sheltered bay and just hope it all goes away. Somehow we doubt that it will.

Kitchengate part 2

As anyone who has been through the "modern" method of installing a kitchen knows, you must have so many differently qualified folks involved so you are "health and safety" and regulations compliant. Gas fitter, electrician etc so everything gets certificated. Having seen how some folks do jobs and then issue the "certificate", we are seriously cynical about the worth of this but it has to be done (and paid for naturally!)

The good news was that after the rather good cast of Ben Hur had finished, our little house in Hythe had a sparkly new kitchen in place. The only challenge will be teaching Mrs Toddler how to use the appliances as we have no clue either. Mr Toddler avoids cooking but he might get called upon when the clocks change to synchronise everything. Oh, hang on, the "internet of things" has arrived for us courtesy of Mr Bosch and the new kit so they ought to reset to and from daylight saving time automatically:

The only challenge is getting them to become part of the internet of things. The appliances seem a little reluctant. Perhaps they feel that they are a little too grand to be in our little house. Or they might be upset as we changed the display language from German to English. Or maybe the technology employed is simply beyond the ageing captain - remember that he last worked in IT over 7 years ago when the punched card and Cobol were still pretty sexy.

During the final activity spurt of #kitchengate we continued to cough and splutter and generally feel most sorry for ourselves. All the planned social activities were cancelled too. Eating out was not such a treat when you cannot taste the stuff properly anyway. Recovery was slow, very very slow. However we did perk up enough to make a dash to Scotland to recover the old Victron inverters which we replaced whilst up there last summer. Sheila and Niall had kindly stored them for us and we felt more that a bit guilty about how long their garage had been cluttered with two big blue boxes:

The spluttering and coughing continued upon our return but the pain was eased by having a sparkly new kitchen:

The pain increased when we had to lug everything downstairs again and into the new cupboards. Mrs Toddler will never find all of her things again. We need to emigrate before she blames us.