Disappointment

 We are still in the marina - clearly today has not been as we had hoped. Steve came mid morning to tell us that the delivery company had failed, using the excuse that they could not find anyone at 8:30 to sign for the parcel. They made no attempt to call Steve on his phone nor leave a tracking number so that it could be chased up. On line, Steve could only re-book the delivery for Monday so there is little we can do at the moment but sit and wait.

Christine used the time to complete the cleaning whilst Mike spent quite a bit of time with the hob. The burners were not working too well and often not 'latch' to stay alight. A good clean of the burners, removing a fair bit of burnt food remains from inside, helped quite a bit but not with the two front ones. Some Google searches gave various suggestions. If it was a problem with the thermocouple safety devices then it is surprising that more than one developed the same fault simultaneously. Another tip suggested that sometimes the control knob does push in far enough to activate another safety device. Yes, there did seem to be quite a bit of resistance and also some accumulated dirt around them. A good scrub and a tiny amount of GT85, with a lot of repeated pushing seemed to free them and now they are much  better, although we are not yet confident that we have found the complete solution!

Mike took the supposedly empty gas bottle to the marina office to exchange for a full one only to be told that it was still perhaps a third full! It is now back in place and on-line so we shall see how long it lasts. Perhaps it needed a good shake after the winter.

In the past few years we have managed to schedule in an early short 'shakedown' cruise to flush these post-winter issues. Most times we have found at least one problem. We could not fit that in this year, partly because other things (including the health factors) intruded but also because all routes away from the marina had winter stoppages - we could not even have cruised as far as Worcester.

Time to learn patience!