A quick fix for Jena

I was called out early this morning to visit Jena moored at Lea Bridge

A fiery offering to the genius loci, apparently.

Before getting on with the task in hand, I had to ask this chap to extinguish his fire. He was very amenable, and I tried to be as friendly and charming as I could, and between us the fire was out after a few minutes.

JN had asked me to help explain the random over-heating problems to the skipper of the day. AP - who trains skippers for the Trust - has a lot of experience with the sort of engine Jena has - and how it works so I advised, while he did the hands-on work.

Jena is thought to develop an air-lock in her water cooling system every so often, which then leads to a rapid overheat. We try to manage this by bleeding air from her skin tank and topping up her water system with anti-freeze and water. Today the skin-tank bleed plug was a nuisance to remove, but we managed it just in time as the first trainee of the day approached.

He also helpfully suggested that the overflow pipe from the water filler cap be run into a plastic milk bottle - so that it doesn't spill over into the engine sump, and so that water from it will siphon back into the system as the engine cools after any overheating incident.

AP also took me to task for leaving weed on Jena's prop, and the cabin bilge rather full. A fair cop, we had had a discussion about clearing the prop at the end of our journey to Lea Bridge and the outcome was a phone call advising the Trust that we would leave this to the next crew to take her out.

The cabin bilge has been noted a few times. This time I emailed JN and when he phoned me I repeated our strong request for the bilge to be pumped and a suitable pump for it left on-board.

Then I got on my bike and cycled home for breakfast.

1 hour.