I wake up feeling somewhat ropey, but not as bad as I had feared – obviously the cherry schnapps did the trick! We decide to go to our boat today – I have three 25 litre containers of red diesel in the garden shed which would be much better in the fuel tank of the boat, and it’s been such a long time since we checked on it. We get to the boatyard in Wayford Bridge shortly after lunchtime to find that we are only just in time! The batteries are completely exhausted, so the bilge pump hasn’t been working and there is a lot of water in the bilges – luckily the engine compartment hasn’t been completely flooded, so I swap over the fridge battery (which still has some charge in it) for the main starting battery (which is completely dead), and the bilge pump springs into action. There’s not enough juice in the battery to start the engine, but at least it should reduce the level of river water in the bilges while I take the other batteries home to charge them. We load the batteries into my wife’s car, and then drive around to Barton Turf to meet my wife’s youngest son, his wife and our youngest granddaughter, where we sit in a shady spot and enjoy a picnic and a chinwag.
We arrive home in the early evening and I get the batteries into the house and on charge while my wife busies herself washing her car. Hopefully, there will be sufficient charge in the batteries to start the boat tomorrow.