The Journey -
General Burbles on Rosy

Perhaps you recall General Burbles?  A garrulous chap, quite well acquainted with the Majors Cock-up and Disaster.

Anyway, its been a busy(ish) week.

The engine transplant plans seem to be progressing quite well.  The Perkins engine is on order from Calcutt Boats, and will be delivered to Dick Goble later next week.  Meanwhile Dick has rented a truck, and he and Jeannie are due here on Sunday week complete with new engine.  Hence next week will be a boat cleaning week.

Last Monday I got the urge to make some lemon curd - a recipe for it was in a canal magazine.  Something was wrong with something, as no matter how carefully I followed the recipe, I always landed up with three unused eggs left over.  Luckily, my elderly Good Housekeeping Cook Book came to the rescue, and we ended up with some scrumptious lemon curd - a bit more yellow ochre in colour than the stuff in the shops, mainly because mine has no artificial colouring in it, and there is no white sugar on Rosy  - only brown.

On Tuesday the radio aerial snapped (groan) but there is a local car radio shop (hooray) but they cannot supply me with a new bit (groan) but they can repair the old bit (hooray) but I'll have to wait 'cos he can't do it straight away (groan) so if I call back tomorrow it will be ready (hooray).  And it was!!!!!

Wednesday was market day in the morning, and I bought a kilogram of morello cherries and two kilograms of nectarines.  The cherries were scoffed by teatime and the nectarines by Thursday lunchtime and I was left with some stalks, stones and loose bowels.

Friday was a busy day.  The rear wheel on my bike has been giving problems, mainly because the spokes are bit rattly.  So it is now in the bike shop undergoing repairs.  Then I visited the nearby 'depot vente' - a rather up-market junk shop - and bought five shot glasses for a Euro.

I'd scrounged two Pastis glasses from a bar, but they both broke within a couple of weeks, so I'm hoping these five will last a bit longer.  They have two main uses on Rosy.  One is as a measure for rice and water when cooking rice.  The other is as a glass from which to imbibe rum, cassis, brandy and pastis and ice cold vodka.  Yes?  And why shouldn't I mix them together if I wish?

Also on Friday, at 1810 hrs (the locks close at 1800 hrs) the boatyard got a call from a boat that had just cleared the top lock.  Could they come and moor for 10 months?  Er ... yes, of course.  Only they were a bit pushed because they had to catch the TGV tomorrow morning at 8am!!  Could YOU live like that?  I couldn't live like that.  If one leaves a boat for 12 months, it's at least half a day's work to winterise the boat - giving it weather (and especially ice and frost) protection.

Then on Friday night ...

There are often things in life that we would like to do, that those in 'authority' deem to be too dangerous for the likes of you and me, and therefore suppress information about them.  The end result is that we continue doing them anyway, but because of imprecise information we sometimes get it wrong and - in extremis - kill ourselves.  The drug Ecstasy is a good example.  People ARE going to use it, but information as to how to spot the genuine article is frequently unavailable, so that one doesn't know whether one is getting the real thing or a more dangerous substitute/fake.

Right.  We're on about propane gas.  Gas is a problem for European boaters.  The valve on the bottle is different to the type used in UK, though it's been the same one in Holland, Belgium and France.  BUT one cannot swap a bottle acquired in one country for a bottle in another country.  Hence one accumulates bottles as one moves around.

The set-up on Rosy consists of a regulator to which one can attach two gas bottles.  The duty one feeds gas to the boat, and when it is empty, the standby one is automatically brought into operation, the changeover being smooth and seamless.  One can then replace the empty bottle and the cycle can start all over again.  Of course, there is a major disadvantage - one has to check the system regularly to see if one of the bottles is empty.  If one forgets to do this (and nearly everybody does) then one lands up with two empty bottles and no gas.  Hence I only turn on one bottle.  When it is empty and the gas stops working, I switch the lever round to the second bottle, and replace the first.

Here in Europe, my second bottle is - still - a UK bottle.  I only use it for the two or three days that elapse between the French bottle running out, and its replacement arriving.  However, the UK bottle won't last for ever.

What to do?  I decided to re-use my third bottle, an empty Belgian one.  I bought some high pressure, gas 'pigtail', rubber tubing, two valves and two stainless jubilee clips and made up the necessary connection.

(If you live in UK, this is all nearly impossible to do.  First of all, most of the modern valves are one-way - allowing gas to flow out of a bottle, but not allowing it to flow in.  It is also getting tricky to buy the requisite rubber tubing, as the Boat Safety Scheme requires (I think) the terminals on the tubing to be crimped on).

The full bottle then has to be securely suspended upside-down (or downside-up - it matters not which) above the right-way-up empty bottle.  The double-ended pig-tail is then securely connected to each of the valves, and the two valves are opened.  The theory being that the liquid gas in the full, upper bottle will drip down into the empty, lower bottle.

The last person that I read about who died doing this had come (correctly) to the conclusion that things could be speeded up if a pressure differential could be induced/increased between the two bottles.  He (incorrectly) decided to apply heat to the upper (full) bottle, via some sort of gas powered blow torch, and blew himself and the bottles up though, fortunately, no one else was hurt.

I therefore went the other way, and cooled the lower (empty) bottle with cold water.  I had hopped for a sunny day, when I would have left the full bottle out in the sun for a bit, keeping the empty bottle in shade - I acquired the full bottle from a local garage where the rack of bottles lives permanently in the sun (or at least, when the sun bothers to shine).

I left the drip working for a couple of hours.  My measuring system (using the bathroom scales) fell apart as they are electric, and the display is an old L.E.D.  which is totally unreadable outside.  However, what was the empty bottle is now considerably heavier than it was.

That's it!!

Toodle pip!!

Bill