Cropredy Marina

Kind of handy to have a day without moving before heading off for a white card model meeting for panto. I got the drawing board out again to do a ground plan and section of the set. The section is useful to check sight lines, making sure things you don’t want to be seen until a certain point can be kept well out of view. This is a touch hard at Chippy because they don’t really have a fly tower, so things either have to concertina up on themselves or only be a certain height to start off with. A section is also useful for the lighting designer.

I also had time to run through the model doing all the changes, a kind of dress rehearsal for tomorrow when I do it in front of the creative team. Then I did a few sketches of some big props and puppets, these were only basic but enough to convey the basic idea of them.

All day boats have been heading downstream, quite a few hire boats. I wonder how many don’t know about Banbury Lock being shut. Yes there is a notice on a lock beam, yes there is a notice on line that you can sign up to. But not everybody looks or knows to look. I’m hoping to get to Banbury early tomorrow so that I can check out the mooring situation and see what’s happening at the lock before catching a bus out to Chippy.

On board Oleanna the two working batteries seem to be doing okay, they have charged up on the shore line. So the loose connection on the alternator will have been to blame for their sorry state. The temporary fix to bypass the failed battery needs to be made more permanent until we decide how to proceed. One new battery or three?

We are now down to two thirds of our normal amp hours. This was the original capacity Oleanna was specked with, we then changed our minds and wanted a third battery. This has served us well, but we’d been thinking we might upgrade to twice the capacity now that lithium batteries are more advanced, cheaper and easier to get hold of than they were seven years ago.

However for the time being we need to live within our electrical means. We’ll see how we go, but the first thing that will get switched off will be the freezer as when it’s hot it is working continuously. I’ve not restocked it and meals are currently planned around eating it empty. A big Sainsburys order arrived this morning, the wine cellar is restocked with boxes so that will make up for the freezer being off. Chicken curry new style tonight, lots of spices, but not too hot, yum.

This evening Mick turned the shore power off to see how the two batteries cope overnight on their own. Fingers crossed they survive the night.

0 locks, 0 miles, 4 loads washing, 2 tumble dries, 1 grounded cat, 1 Cr*predy! 1 model ready, 12 sheets of drawings, 2 batteries charging, 6 boxes under the back steps, 1 bag of peas to use up.