Thursday 5 July - yea, new batteries

Grey skies and rain greeted the day. Battery man definitely due today. Turned off battery charger to allow old batteries to cool before removal. With Iain and Kaz, spent the morning removing all ten old batteries. Most of them had stuck to their neighbors, with four joined in the back row. Hard enough lifting one out and up the stairs, but two together was a real effort. Had to get twenty new terminal connectors, because all the cables were screw on types. After lunch we installed the new batteries. Slightly longer but lower than the old ones. Much easier taking them down the stairs, one at a time. Reconnected all the cables, and found one black cable left over. Strange, since Iain and I had independently checked my wiring diagram before we disconnected the batteries, and we did not see anything missing. From symmetry, we figured it must have connected the negative terminals on the frontmost batteries. Here's hoping. Left old batteries out on dock for a recycler to collect, which they did while we were out getting the new gas bottle from Carrefour.