We reluctantly left Fourques this morning and cruised to Meilhan.

Along the way we saw several impressive properties, including this farmhouse with the covered area at the back. Today there were cars parked underneath, but on previous trips we had seen large and small family gatherings there. Indeed, it was this farmhouse, and a couple like it, that gave us the inspiration for the design of the rear of our new house, which will have a covered area outside the entrance door under the roofline of the main house.

We carried on and reached Meilhan around noon, to find several other barges moored, So we grabbed a mooring at the rear, on the floating pontoon near the boat ramp.

One of the advantages of mooring near the boat ramp is that we got to see many comings and goings on the ramp. One of our favourites was “le Balet”, a tiny wooden rowboat with electric motor and a cute dog, who insisted on walking around everything the guy was trying to do. Eventually, they tootled off down the canal, never to be seen again (by us).

We settled down to wait for Stuart & Christine, who were visiting friends near Bordeaux, then coming to see us, then going on to Buzet to see Walt and Gail (before they leave for the UK early next week). In the meantime, Rita baked a plum crumble (and an apricot crumble to eat today).

They were a bit late arriving, but as soon as Stuart stepped on board, he said “I hear you’ve got a bit of a generator problem!”. Since he had managed to fix a few other things on Kanumbra in the past (since Kanumbra is very like his Piper barge Hilda May), I quickly accepted his offer to “take a look”. I tried to start the generator, and it would start OK, and then run for 5-10 seconds, then stop and try to start again twice more. After three attempts, we would see “AC-1 Voltage: Failure” on the control panel (at least, this time the generator had the decency to now fail, unlike in Buzet when it behaved itself when the mechanic was looking). Stuart then said he recognised the problem, and had had the same a while ago. He got a UK Mastervolt specialist to solve his problem, but now he was just going to try to remember what the guy did. Apparently, there were three possible causes (and perhaps many others). Firstly, the capacitors in the generator might have given up the ghost and hence the generator was not delivering enough “punch” to start the charging process. This turned out to be his problem, which was fixed by installing an external set of new capacitors. This was not doable now, so he looked at the short-term fix that he had also received. The second problem was that the generator was not running at high enough RPM. Unlike a normal diesel engine with an accelerator, there is no accelerator cable on the generator and hence the engine runs at a constant RPM (although it actually slows down when under load). So one fix is to manually adjust the generator RPM by means of screws which set the RPM to a (higher) fixed RPM. Thirdly, if the generator is under load when trying to start, then this might be enough to slow the engine RPM such that it is no longer producing enough voltage to start the charging process.

SO, what he did was adjust the RPM higher, and then turn off the Charger and the Inverter before trying to start the generator. And then remember to turn the Charger and Inverter back on again after it had run successfully for a few minutes. And, lo and behold, it started, and continued running, first time!!  Since we were already on shorepower, we thought that maybe that was helping to get it started, so we disconnected shorepower and tried again. Success again!! Rather than tempt fate, we turned the generator off again, and joined Rita and Christine down at the river for apricot crumble and drinks, where Stuart and Rita got immersed in planning the musical agenda for the 2018 Fêtes des Plaisanciers in Moissac. Time ran away from us and we didn’t realise how late it was until Stuart got a call from Gail in Buzet, asking where they were. After several apologies and explanations, Gail said she’d put the food for dinner back in the fridge, and Stuart and Christine made a late departure for Buzet. This year has been strange not seeing much of them, and this would be our only opportunity, but we are looking forward to seeing lots of them at the Fêtes next year.

After they left, Rita went up the hill in Meilhan for a swim, while I kept reading the Ali biography, before we had dinner on the rear deck and a relaxing evening.