More Staying Put

Tis a hard life, all this staying put. But when you’re a few days early for the next bit (going down the Monty), why move on? We are now moored at Stank’s Visitor Moorings – according to Canalplan. Just a few 100 yds from the Ellesmere junction. You can tell it’s half-term – 100’s of boats sailing up and down. I walked the dog yesterday and watched/helped a newbie “it’s our first hour, can you tell?”. They did OK. They wanted to stop for lunch and unwisely, just pulled over and then got stuck. They did have the Pearson’s guide and I said, try and stop on the official moorings – you’ll get rings and usually, it’s deep enough too! Happy Days.

Lots of these around – hopefully the babies are big enough now to avoid being taken by predators
A nice boat – “Rupert” plus an old Landy!
Here comes Lloyd & Dee on Tiller Girl – we first met these guys (from New Zealand) at Wrenbury and then again at Whixall. They have been to the end and back and passed on some useful info. They moored next to us and came aboard for some wine & chat. Very nice people.
Just across the canal – Ellesmere public school
Things to do on a Bank Holiday morning – make horseradish sauce! This was from some of the fresh horseradish we were given by Mr Davies – which we froze. Must be beef for lunch then.
The all important solar power – rain is forecast later but if we can put back in the power we used overnight, then we can stay put. 174 Watts here but it fluctuates – sometimes over 400W and 28 amps!
the new battery monitor – here showing how many ampere hours we are down. The batteries hold 660 Ah and I try to limit how much we use – hopefully never down to less than 80% (so -132Ah), here we’re down to less than 10%, so that’s OK. It was down to -67Ah this morning but the solar is doing its job – running the boat’s electrics and recharging the batteries. The shallower you discharge the batteries, the greater the number of cycles you get out of them – they last longer!
Tuesday’s trip – we have a week down the Monty, so we’ll do quite a bit of that “staying put”. Hopefully quieter than the main line.