Preparation

We are nearing our first outing of the year - we aim to be back at the boat next Saturday, after a very busy week ahead. Apart from the domestic packing, most now seems to be ready. Today we collected the remaining items from the 12VoltShop in St Austell. Last weekend we took delivery of a satellite dish and Freeview box, on the basis that this should give us greater reception opportunities. Although we have heard good reports from people using a sat dish on narrow boats, we are still interested to see just how good the recption is as the boat moves - obviously we can really only use it whilst moored but an initial test at home showed that it is quite sensitive to directional set up.

The changes to the cabin lights should have been completed and there are bespoke cupboard doors for the under-bunk stowage awaiting us to fit on this next trip. We also bought today two wall mounting LED lights to put in the sitting area of the main cabin.

Over the winter we have also had a Battery Monitor system fitted and the few days after the New Year indicated that this should be very useful. However, we are still concerned about the batteries and may replace them in the near future.

In order to avoid having to run the inverter unnecessarily we will also be experimenting with running electronic items, such as this laptop, directly from the 12v supply using lov voltage stabilisers.

The CanalMap software is running much better and a local in-car test irined out a few wrinkles but no doubt more will show up when it is used for real. The associated GPS system works well around here, anyway!