Oundle

Here I am Rune

Distance 7.7 miles

Total 4138 Locks  264 Tunnels

Running total mileage 6,363.7 miles

 

We’ve got as far as Oundle Marina but they were the saviours I was hoping for. We have filled up with diesel which was a main consideration, but they had no gas of our sized bottle, they don’t do Thetford Cassette spares and they don’t stock replacement alternators. This means we are going to have to press on to Northampton on just the one alternator, so fingers crossed that nothing fails on that one. It does complain a bit when we fire up in the morning and the drive belt squeals for quite a while, but so far it has then settled down. The only failing is that the State of Charge meter seems to insist that we are fully charged on the domestic batteries after running for only about an hour and a half whilst still charging at 15A, normally the charge drops below 8A before it reads fully charged, so we are ignoring the SOC reading and relying on the charging rate.

 

Coming down the River Nene, there were only three overnight stops between here and Northampton (although one was on a lock mooring). If we get the same going back we might make it to Northampton by Saturday.