I ever spent was summer in San Francisco, so possibly or possibly not said Mark Twain. I'm beginning to understand what he meant. Ever since we left Newry we have been waiting for summer to arrive. As we have spent so long on shore power the fact that our paraffin heater wasn't working has slipped to the bottom of the to-do list. Big mistake! We are now in eco friendly mode and rely on paraffin for cooking and heating and battery power for everything else, so no fan heaters for us anymore.
It needed to be fixed, or replaced.....?
I decided to grab the nettle and strip it down. This proved just as daunting as I had imagined. I stripped cleaned and reassembled the parts starting from the fuel tank. If I had gone the other way from the fuel feed I might have saved myself three rebuilds!
Aquila, Dark Tarn and the Cat........
Like most essentially simple things it's actually quite complicated, it's gravity fed drip feed goes through a carburettor like valve, it even has a float chamber and needle valves, daunting....
I initially diagnosed carbon build up and tried cleaning the combustion chamber in Ireland, this didn't work. So today as Lynne was leaving the boat and pontoon for a shopping trip to Milford With Jimmy and Shari from Aquila,
Off to the shops......
Each time I reassembled and tried to light the heater it refused to burn properly until the last copper feed pipe from the fuel valve which I cleaned using a bike pump.
As it lit and began to burn cleanly my phone rang, it was Lynne obviously they needed me to dinghy over to carry three people and a mountain of supplies, what to do? Keep my eye on the heater or go to the shore? Luckily due to poor reception neither Lynne or me could actually connect so as I dithered, launched the dinghy and began to fill the outboard with fuel, all the time popping down below to check the heater was still lit I noticed that Aquilas dinghy had set off from the shore with three people aboard.
Just then the guy with the dog from the catamaran sharing the floating pontoon with us came past in his dinghy saying he had my shopping. Lovely bloke!
By the time Lynne had come aboard and was beginning to put stuff away she suddenly noticed how warm the boat had suddenly become. I of course just shrugged as if the four hour struggle to get it working was nothing.
It's anything but, it is essential to have heating on a boat in Britain. It is difficult to overstate the boost to comfort and morale that simply being warm can be.
Our Thirty year old Dikinson Chesapeake working beautifully. As I sit in our comfortable saloon writing this I am smirking on the inside, and in my shirt sleeves. Outside its blowing a force 5, and it's a chill wind. Time to head south.
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