18th & 19th May

We went to the local market, and whilst I won’t bore you with all the details, amongst the purchases were absolutely scrumptious Cherries which I believe were called Napoleon, along with some equally delicious Black Cherries…………….suffered later for my greed though exactly as Sara predicted!!

Sara spent most of today trying to sort out flights for my grandsons, Reyce and Prentice. Now we thought this would be straightforward but o’ no…

Airlines will not let youngster under 16 fly unaccompanied, so we thought OK lets go with British Airways to Toulouse and have an accompanied flight which BA’s web site calls Sky Flyer Solo. However their web site said this could be booked through them or through an agent – but it could not be done online.

We had two travel agent working on this as we couldn’t get an answer when calling BA, one of them being Thompson and the other being Ramsey Travel. Thompson said they couldn’t book these kind of flights unless they went through a subsidiary or a subsidiary of BA waffle waffle waffle…………We are still waiting on a call back from Ramsey Travel which was absolutely promised before close of business – and this after the third call we made to them.

On Monday morning Sara got through to BA and a really helpful chap sorted everything out – so the boys will arrive at Toulouse on Saturday….yippee can’t wait to see them. Can you guess which travel agents we will NOT be using for future holidays?

While all this was going on, the fresh water pump that had started to leak required my attention. When I stripped it down I found the diaphragm was torn. I then checked on Jabsco’s website to see if they still offered spares for this old pump, and was pleased to find out they actually had these in stock. Therefore I thought it would be an idea to work up a full list of parts and give the pump a complete overhaul. The cost of these parts and having them delivered by UPS was going to be around £100.

Now the Capitianerie’s office at Moissac is run by a smashing English Couple Iain and Kaz. Who according to their web site also service boats etc. Therefore I went to speak to Iain to find out if he could source the parts quickly in France. Turns out he had a new modern pump in stock, and available for sale – a wee bit of bartering and I came out with a new pump. I’ll repair the old one when we get back home. I needed to do the deal there and then as he wouldn’t be back till 1700.

Now us guys know that there is no such thing as a simple job on a boat. Because this was a different pump, the hoses didn’t fit. Now I was sure I had some braided nylon tubing on the boat, so it was turned upside down until I found enough to make new inlet and outlet hoses…..brilliant.

The fitting on the new pump needed larger “O” rings and I found those too…..brilliant
I installed the whole thing, switched on the pump and found water was leaking badly from the smallest length of the new hose and sods law it was in the most awkward position. No matter how much I tightened the hose clips I could not get this hose to seal…….not brilliant.

I worked my way along all the Brit boats trying to scrounge a couple of the right size (smaller than the ones I carried) of hose clips – everyone had the same size I was using and no one had the smaller size. There was blue language aboard Sun Dog this afternoon I can tell you!

I even tried using a ratchet and socket on the hose clips but no this wee bloody hose would not seal onto the copper pipe no matter what I tried…………………eventually it reached 1700 and Iain came back so I went to mooch a couple of the right size of clips. He was amazed I couldn’t get this to seal, but didn’t have smaller hose clips. He reckoned that it would have to be either the copper pipe having a leak, or the new piece of braided nylon I used.

Here comes your turn to laugh at me…………I checked this new piece of hose and found it had a hole on the underside, and this was where the water was coming out, and not through lack of proper hose clips. I was in the same breath totally exasperated at having spent hours trying to seal this sucker, whilst pleased I could cut a new piece (without holes) and get the job finished. This was all done within five minutes, with the new pump working perfectly and much quieter than the old one. Have you stopped laughing yet?? Well I’ll make you laugh a wee bit more – I actually started this job at 1130!!

After getting everything tidied away I saw this catamaran working it’s way down the canal – I wouldn’t have believed it would fit through some of the bridges as they have tow paths inside which restricts the width quite a bit.