North Star almost ready

It's disappointing to need so much work doing on North Star, but not entirely unsurprising; we think she was stationary in the marina more than the previous owners cared to realise. We have already had her out on the Trent three times, half way along the T&M, around the BCN and back out to Warwickshire in just three months.

Calcutt Boats have been excellent, always e-mailing to advise on progress, and getting detailed estimates before starting the work. They have had plenty of opportunity to increase their work but on several occasions have advised that it doesn't need doing right now.

The original reason for heading to Calcutt was to have a big overhaul of the BMC 1.5, but that turned out to be straightforward and was - as we suspected - a matter of adjusting the timing.

The far bigger issues have taken much more time, effort and money.
We have needed a new alternator, improved wiring for the entire back end of the boat, and we decided to have the Smart system fitted. Then we decided to fit a filter to the bilge pump outlet, rewire and refit the headlamp, increase the size of the gas locker drains, replace the stern tube greaser delivery tube with a wider bore version, reroute wiring at the front of the boat, switch the engine control panel to the other side, fit new distribution board and repair a number of niggling little broken things. Oh and fit a new headlamp. The old one struggled to pick out someone standing in front of it; the new one should allow five-a-side evening football on the surface of the moon. A bigger concern will be luring ships onto Lizard Rock.

In an ideal world, I would have done some of this myself, but it's not. It has also unexpectedly allowed me a few weeks sailing. It's still 'messing about in boats'. Wonder if you could successfully gaff rig a narrowboat?