Where has the time gone?

A flying visit to France plus other (... Further forays into France

Where has the time gone?

It only seems like yesterday I was writing a summing up of August, albeit in September, but here we are at the end of the first week of October and I feel I've completely lost September in a kind of hazy mist. Okay, we had the grand adventure into France on the weekend of the 15th, halfway through the month, but for the life of me, I can't remember much of what we've done since then.

I know there's been quite a bit of boat painting involved – not major, large areas, but details like the railings on the Hennie H, which both Koos and I have been busy with (fiddly and time-consuming).

Fiddly, time-consuming railings

And I've repainted more of the panels on Vereeniging, which I need to do every year. I wish I could find solid wood in the right sizes at an affordable price. The thick plywood I've used lives up to its name as the ply part tends not to survive much in the way of wet weather, no matter how much I smear kit along the edges and paint them. I've replaced them all over the last few years, but the first ones I did are already showing signs of weather damage.

I've replaced all the side panels over the years

But the biggest job was last weekend's efforts to replace three engine cover gaskets on the Vereeniging. Again, on paper this isn't a big job, but it took time and the two of us spent most of last Saturday and Sunday doing it. The first job was to drain the sump of oil, which involved running the engine until it was warm – something Koos particularly enjoys, although I love the sound of the Samofa (aka Leaky Lou) as well. Then he sucked the old oil out with the nifty hand pump built onto the engine block. Having done that, the three covers were removed, which is where I came in.

Two of the engine covers with their knobs
which unscrew to remove them (not my photo
by the way. It comes from a website called De Binnenvaart)

My job was to peel off what remained of the old gaskets and sealant, clean them and their mountings, (which look like the photo below when they're clean), and apply new sealant on both sides of the gaskets when replacing them.

Also not my photo. This one comes from
a website called Marine Power Services

The most difficult part, oddly enough, was putting the covers back on. The knobs you can see in the first photo control a kind of cross bar at the back of the cover, which has to go inside the engine and be twisted round until it holds the cover in place. You then fix them by screwing the knobs back in. Sounds easy, yes? Well, no. Because the cross bars are longer than the height or width of the openings, you have to put them in diagonally. But even that is unbelievably tricky.

Koos tried top right to bottom left; it didn't work. Then he tried top left to bottom right. That didn't work either. Agh! However, in both these efforts, he was trying to put the bottom of the cross bar in first. After numerous frustrating attempts and a bit of damage to one of the new gaskets (sigh), we eventually discovered it was essential to put the top of the cross bar in first, lift the cover up a bit and then the bottom of the bar would go in easily. Voilà! The reason? There's more room to manoeuvre at the top than the bottom; it really was that simple.

After this revelation (and a good half hour), the process went smoothly and all the covers were back in place. You have no idea how relieved we were.

The only thing left was to put new oil in the engine, which I didn't yet have. With these old motors, it's best to use 30 grade oil. Sorry for being technical here, but normal vehicles use 10-40 grade. Just so you know. Thirty grade is a bit more expensive, of course, but luckily I can get it locally, so with seven litres now in the car, tomorrow will be the day for testing whether all our efforts have helped reduce a few of Lou's leaks. Fingers crossed!

See? This is what my memory is reduced to. I can only think of these paltry highlights to the weeks to mark the passing of the month. Maybe I need to add a few photos that I took in our neck of the woods to the mix.

Have a good weekend, allemaal and enjoy your autumn/spring wherever you happen to be.