Seyella's Journey

Thursday 31st August to Tuesday 5th September 2006
I’d ordered a Kerstan satellite dish which hadn’t yet arrived, but we’d only booked the mooring at Junction Boatyard till Thursday. Anyway, we’d been unable to reach the power connection for shore power since our day trip on Tuesday, so there was no advantage in staying. But we had to stay local as the package was going to Dad’s house in Sileby, so moved downstream to Sileby Mill. A beautiful spot, and reasonably handy for shopping in Sileby village.

Sileby Lock - Note extension on tiller bar, thanks Andy.

Bought an anchor and associated paraphanalia from Sileby Mill Boatyard, so we’re OK for the Trent.
Found that we can last for about 4 days on our batteries, so long as we don’t use the power hungry washing machine or vacuum cleaner, but by Sunday needed to empty the loo and fill up with water, so had a gentle run up to Barrow upon Soar to the BW service point. The trouble was, 3½ hours running at slow speed didn’t put an awful lot back into the batteries.
I took advantage of our stay to get the pole and plank painted, so we don’t look so much like virgin boaters!

The engine is due its first service, so rang Bob Knowles Plant Services, the local Isuzu agent. They can do it but cannot give a definite day. Also spoke to Reg Smith from Redhill Marina (see previous) about the cratch and cover and arranged for us to take the boat up to get the work done the first week in October. This means we can leave it there when we go up to Newcastle on Tyne for the Great North Run on October 1st. (Better push the training!)
The dish arrived on Monday PM, so I went up and collected it. I couldn’t wait to try it, as we had been frustrated by not being able to receive a signal on the old one we had brought with us. Connected up, but still no signal!

After an hour of trying, got almost to the point of throwing the dish and digibox into the cut! After calming down, decided I needed to prove that the box was working, so arranged to take it to my brother’s house on Wednesday to hook it up to his Sky dish.
This proved the box works, so back to square one.