I was talking with Iain this morning, and he said that the old man whose wife died last week was looking to tidy his garage a bit and was wondering when I was going to buy the catamaran. So I went up to the bank and withdrew some cash and came back to exchange my 250euro for a catamaran. I now own two boats! While waiting to load it on board Kanumbra, Kaz and Iain were very quick to find a new use for it (-:

While I had been busy buying the catamaran, Rita had made a start on washing all the towels and stuff we bought yesterday. When I came back to Kanumbra, it was quite a colourful site.

In the afternoon, with Iain’s reducer in hand, we went around the local hardware and plumbing suppliers to find a 40mm/25mm reducer. With no success! No one had a simple PVC reducer, let alone one of the right size. At the last place we went to, CeeDO, the guy on duty was determined to find a solution for us, however, and eventually suggested that we insert a piece of stiff 25mm black hose (which he gave to us) into the 28.5mm end to create a 38.5mm/25mm reducer. Oh well, we were halfway there! When we got home, I laboured for a while with files, glue, hammers and a piece of wooden dowelling (actually the handle of a toilet plunger) to force the hose through the end of the reducer, as shown. I then used this to connect the toilet to the outlet pipe and everything seemed to fit, except that the reducer was now so long (38.5/32/28.5/25mm in 3 steps) that I couldn’t put the toilet bowl back against the wall, in order to open the shower door!

But while it was all connected, I thought I’d at least check to see that it all worked. So I connected the input water, plugged in the 220v power, put some fresh water in the bowl, and then pushed the single-flush button. The water entered the bowl, and after a bit of a delay (longer than on the old 24v system) the macerator started. It was quieter than the old one, and all seemed to go OK, except for some minor leaks at each end of the reducer. I tried it again, with the same result. I then got brave and tried the double-flush button. It started up again in the same manner, but after a few seconds, the whole plumbing system exploded as a joint onto the macerator (which I hadn’t checked the tightness of) came loose. Water was going everywhere; it was soon 1cm deep on the bathroom floor and I started yelling to Rita for towels! Luckily, she was just bringing in some towels from the line, so we had plenty at hand, and the bathroom was soon relatively dry. I then discovered that the problem was that the outlet pipe seemed to be blocked somewhere before it got to the black water tank, and this was building pressure in the pipes when the macerator was running. Now all I have to do is unblock the pipe (somehow). While I was over talking to Kaz and Iain later in the day, Iain got a call from his marine supplier about some other items he had ordered. So since we had just been talking about reducers, he asked them and they did had a Jabsco 40/25 reducer in stock, and will send it out with Iain’s other items tomorrow.

To get away from toilets etc we decided to get the barge moving today. So we untied the ropes, disconnected the shore power, and pulled Kanumbra up the canal about 15 metres, to fill a gap in front of us and allow a bigger gap behind (as Iain had asked us to do). Not exactly exciting barging, but it did show how little effort was required to pull a 30t barge, once you had got it moving.

While Rita went up the Tarn for a swim, I glued the rubber pads on the ends of the bass feet, and filed the notches in the top of the pan-stand uprights. When she returned from swimming we intended to move Kanumbra across the canal to the diesel pump to fill up the tank (after a long winter), and to load the catamaran onto the deck of Kanumbra. But after starting the engine and letting it warm up, and then untieing everything, we discovered that the bowthrusters didn’t work (absolutely no reaction to the joystick controller). Since it is somewhat difficult to steer backwards through a narrow canal, with boats doubled up, without a bowthruster, we reconsidered our plans. I was willing to give it a go, but Rita wisely over-ruled me. So we tied up again, and set about working out the cause of the bowthruster problem. Since the bowthruster is electrically powered from two batteries in the forward compartment of our bedroom, my immediate suspicion was that the batteries were flat after a long winter of non-use. While I had a battery charger on board, it was only rated up to 48 amp-hours, and each battery had a 160 amp-hours capacity. So, I wasn’t sure if it could charge the batteries (one at a time) or whether it would just take forever. Since evening was approaching, I decided that was a problem I would deal with tomorrow.

In the evening, we went for dinner at Cafe l’Uvarium near the Tarn, since Rita wanted to ask them about Kickshins playing in the space just to the west of the cafe on the Saturday afternoon of the Fetes de Plaisanciers. After talking with the waitress, we were lucky enough to meet the new proprietor, whose kids run the Moulin Hotel and Restaurant at the other end of the Uvarium. It seems when the licence came up for the cafe, no one submitted a tender and so the Mairie asked the Moulin if they would like to take over the licence. The father, Jacques, had retired from his architectural career, and so offered to take on the cafe (with help from the Moulin). Indeed, the lovely quiches we had for dinner had been made at the Moulin and re-heated at l’Uvarium Cafe. As luck would have it, Jacques had a vision of bringing the Uvarium area back to what it was like in the 1950’s, when parties, music and dancing were a major attraction of the Uvarium, and top notch artists like Jacques Brel would come to play. When we mentioned celtic music, barn dancing and steel pans, his eyes lit up, and he was keen to help in any way that he could. Life is made up of such chance encounters.

Later in the evening, we did a drive to the house with the car filled with stuff (such as pan-stand components, bass feet, BBQs etc) that had gradually been filling the wheelhouse and rear deck of the barge. We were finding it difficult to move around them, and recent reports of break-ins to boats in port had us worried about leaving stuff on the rear deck. Although Nico didn’t want any furniture moved in till after the tradespeople and cleaners had finished, we figured we could find some space in the cellar, which didn’t really need to be cleaned.