A Slow Start for 2018

It's been a slow start to this cruising season but we are finally out of the marina and on to the cut. We have spent quite a time in Scotland with family followed by having some work done on Serafina.

We planned to do some upgrades to Serafina last season, it's taken up until now to pin down a carpenter to do those upgrades we had planned, at a reasonable price. After taking two hours to cook a cake last year a new cooker was the first thing on the list.

The galley with the old cooker

The new cooker with pot drawer under, first shot mid project and finally the completed product. I must admit I didn't completely understand the installation procedure after talking with the engineer at the marina when he said to me to put it in and he would come over and check it and get it certified. I don't think there will be a next time, but if there is, I'll just get a gas certified plumber to install the cooker and then he can certify his own work and it will be finished instead of having too many people involved. One thing that did come up when the plumber did his checks was the requirement for new tails to the gas bottles, which were out of date. These were only just in date last year when Serafina had her BSS and the manual switch over tap required changing (also out of date). These items both came from Midland Chandlers by mail although I think they must have used a narrowboat, it took six days to get here. Getting things organised at a marina can be a slow process!

We didn't have any drawers in the kitchen now we have two. We reduced the size of one of the cupboards to gain a cutlery drawer.

The side hatch door linings were replaced. When we bought Serafina the old linings were in poor shape and couldn't be restored. The roof hatch linings over the side doors were replaced too, I still have to install some crank bolts so it can be locked from the inside.

 

We found it difficult to replace the bathroom cabinet without completely renovating the whole bathroom so the fix Rachael came up with was to replace the cabinet top and tiles.

The old cabinet

The finished product

With the work to Serafina done we are heading off to Oxford with some of our family aboard for a few days, we will meet friends from Australia along the way who will join us for a few days as well. Let's hope we get all the timings right, since their using trains a railway station is critical!