First Night
We’ve just spent our first 24 hours aboard. We arrived and set up without pulling off any knobs, cooked ourselves lunch in the oven and realised - on seeing a flashing light on the inverter - that we’d managed to significantly deplete our battery. It seems our batteries charge through the invertor so, by switching it off over the weekend, the battery didn’t charge from the shoreline connection. Battery management, we understand, needs a careful eye. Basically you shouldn’t let them fully deplete (60% is the optimum lowest level!) The life of the batteries is greatly reduced if you operate them outside of these parameters.
The afternoon was sunny so we took tea on the tug deck before wandering into town to take a look at Aylesbury town-centre wharf which was empty of boats save for the town’s Little Guide Boat clearly not operational at the moment. This was the home of the Aylesbury Canal Society from 1971 or thereabouts until 2013 when they were paid a lot of money to move to their current basin about a mile up the arm. The Waterside Theatre is an impressive building (no picture as my phone along with the boats batteries had almost run out of charge.) Some of the buildings in the market square are quite sweet but the town suffers from “modern” “development” trampling over the character of a once handsome market town. We bought some provisions and headed back to the boat.
It was getting chilly so we lit the Morsø stove which, to be honest, didn’t throw out as much heat as I was expecting. We bunged on a couple of potatoes on a grid inside the stove and hoped that they might bake eventually. We managed to light the central heating to supplement the Morsø - this time without incident! Note to self: wrap a bit more tin foil around the potatoes next time to limit soot damage. The spuds were lovely and cooked without switching on the power hungry oven. We need to see if we can get a small casserole dish that’ll fit in here!
Sooty spuds
Retiring for the night and with the battery power slowly climbing we debated whether pyjamas and a winceyette nightgown along with a couple of hot water bottles should be added to our shopping list.
We woke to a frosty morning but the stove still alight. It was nicely warm in the cabin so, we’ll have to wait and see how we cope after five years living in a well insulated flat with luxurious underfloor heating, as the evenings get progressively colder!