No inclination to make an early start so we didn't!
After a pleasant lie-in, we nipped up to the Roundbush for breakfast and then on to Maldon for a flying visit to the chandlers. Got in and out without buying anything other than the spark plug I wanted!
Back to Fambridge, we dug out the Seagull 40 Lightweight outboard I bought off Ebay a few weeks ago. Previous efforts to get it running had failed due to a total lack of spark and having eliminated all the other possible causes, and given that the spark plug had come out of another engine with no spark, I reckoned it a fair bet that the plug was the culprit
Unfortunately, at some point the head on this engine has been drilled, tapped and heli-coiled. Fair enough but the heli-coil disintegrated when I tried to insert the new plug. Oh well, I can either get it done again or acquire a new head or even a second engine to build one good one out of two
Having failed in that endeavour, we moved on to another job I wanted to do ...
This was to connect up the NMEA output from the GPS to the tiller pilot. Easy job made tricky by not having left enough slack in the cable from the GPS to the VHF into which I needed to make the connection. Fettled that (another bodge!) and after a bit of a head scratch due to the manual being less than clear we sucessfully engaged track mode on the tiller pilot.
This means that the pilot will automatically steer the boat from waypoint to waypoint on the course programmed into the GPS. A very useful facility but one, I feel, to be used with care and caution!
That done, we set to tidying up and offloading our personal kit before I moved Brigantia back on to her mooring. The ferry was already out and about so I was picked up and dropped back to the pontoon in minutes. We set off homeward mid-afternoon after a short but very enjoyable weekend on board.
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