First Light

Thursday evening I went to the Lexington in London, just between Kings Cross and Angel.  I've not been there before, but Rachel Sermanni was playing.

She started the set on her own, with her superb guitar playing and amazing voice.  Having listened to her CD, it doesn't do her credit - you just have to see her live.

After a couple of songs she is joined by three girls playing fiddle and harmony singing, and one on piano.  This was truly a fantastic evening of music, and a shame when it ended.

On Saturday I was supposed to see Mark Radcliffe and the Big Figures at Bury Met.  3pm I got a phone call, "Mark has had to cancel the gig because he has food poisoning".  Something he eat maybe ?

Sunday afternoon I managed to get a couple of hours on the boat.  A trial fit of the Sterling Inverter/charger, and the electric cupboard is starting to get quite full.  I am going to fit a fan to the base of the cupboard in order to keep a reasonable air flow around all of this equipment.

A quick fitting of the first downlight, and a couple of switches, and the first of the many lights is working.
I got three different LED's to try and see the difference.  They range from cold, slightly blue-ish light, a reasonable neutral light, and a quite powerful slightly yellow light.  I can't make my mind up, so I will just buy a few of them and swap and change them until I am happy.

Loads of splicing

Easter weekend is great!  Two bank holidays at once, and I don't even work in a bank!

So I managed to get two days on the boat.  Now I can run the engine for a while every time I go to the boat, all of the batteries are charging happily and hopefully the Smartgauge will synchronise itself soon.

I started working down the boat getting all of the wiring connections in place, and splicing all of the junctions.  All except the shortest of the main lighting runs is done in 6mm tinned thinwall cable.  This is way over the top as far as current rating is concerned, but (hopefully) the voltage drop will be minimum. At each of the switch positions a splice is taken off the red cable with a 2.5mm tail, the splice is soldered, cleaned up and then bound in heatshrink.  At each of the light positions the Black cable is again spliced off with 2.5mm tails.

When I thought about this job a few weeks ago, I thought "One day should see all the cables in place".  A day and a half over Easter, and I have managed to get half way down the boat with just the lighting!

One problem is the cold weather, which has rendered my 25W soldering iron near useless against the 6mm cable.  So lost time for a journey to screwfix for a 40W Iron.

I have also run out of black heatshrink, so I used a piece of yellow on the last splice.  I sticks out like a sore thumb, so I will have to replace that!

Sunday I went to the Major for Sunday dinner.  Stu and Nita have been to the Lakes, so I had a fabulous enormous Herdwick Mutton shoulder Sunday dinner - I don't need to eat until about Wednesday now!

Sunday evening, The Accoustic Gathering were playing at Hitchin Folk Club.  Doug still has his cold and Rays' Granddaughter (aged about 1) was joining in with the singing at one point!