The high temperatures of the past week have started to abate a little, and the cooler nights mean that more undisturbed sleep is possible. Rita was much more refreshed as she headed off to Dijon today. I had hoped to get the tarpaulin cover off the front deck today, but the variable breezes meant that it would have been a tricky, and potentially dangerous, situation if the breeze sprung up after I had untied all the connecting ropes and before I had got the tarp all folded away. So I decided to wait until the breeze dies down before attempting this.

Since it had cooled down a bit today, I was looking forward to a warm shower, but it was not to be because we had no hot water. I thought it was because we forgot to turn the electirc hot water heater on, so I turned it on and waited, but still no hot water. So I went down into the engine room and discovered the problem. In the de-winterising notes I prepared for Rita, which she had to do herself because no one was available to help her, I forgot to mention that the red&black bypass hose around the hot water tank had to be removed and the inlet and outlet pipes reconnected to the water system. Also the valve on the silver inlet pipe to the boiler needed to be turned on, for when the boiler is used to produce the hot water.

The trouble was that by now we had filled the watertank, and hence the pipes were filled with water under pressure. I tried, optimistically and cautiously, to see if I could very quickly pull the water pipe out of the bypass hose and quickly connect it to the tank. But as soon as the disconnection was made, water went everywhere so I very quickly jammed it back in the bypass hose. I will have to totally empty the watertank before removing the bypass hose sometime in the next week, so that we can get some hot water, which I am sure we will need at some time in the nearish future.

This meant that my highlights for the day were more blogging, doing the laundry on-board (in cold water) and going up to the Post Office to post a letter for Rita. Yippee!

But at least we got a nice sunset over the Saone.