Sorry for the absence - I've been unable to type since the weekend...
I'll explain. On Saturday (yes Saturday - I was surprised too) I had an appointment to see a consultant about the carpel tunnel problem. It turned out that my left hand (I'm "kack-handed" btw) is quite severe and the consultant would like to operate on it asap.
In a normal world, that would be being arranged right now - alas, due to work commitments I will not be able to take any time off to recover until April at the earliest... in fact, all holidays are banned until we get this and the next ride delivered and installed...(don't ask) SO - the surgeon offered me some temporary relief in the form of a combined aesthetic and steroid injection - RIGHT into my left hand/wrist. There seemed rather a lot of the stuff to go into a small area - I was a brave boy.
Unfortunately, once administrated, I lost the use of my fingers until this morning and after a few slightly painful hours my whole hand was numb too.
THIS morning though, I awoke and feel like a new man (well left hand at any rate) - it's been marveous today for the first time in months. Apparently, it might last a month or so and I can have it done a couple times more as a tide-me-over. I'm on a promise that IF it suddenly deteriorates, I have to let them know and they will operate asap so as to prevent irreversible nerve damage - so that's good.
ANYWAY - After that was done, as you might imagine, progress on the boat was slow... I DID managed to fit the smart-gauge and cut the foam up
We called into a fabric shop on Sunday and bought some lining material (to cover the foam with) and some hard wearing other stuff (we've no idea what it's called) to make covers with... Having spent an hour trying to work out how to thread up Andy's mothers old sewing machine this could be a long process.
BACK to the smartgauge - I think I got a good deal with it from Cactus http://www.cactusnav.com/merlin-smartguage-battery-monitor-p-11874.html
and it was quite simple to install - although doing it without the use of the fingers of my left hand was tricky.
The instructions say to connect it DIRECTLY to the battery terminals - complete with 3 amp in-line fuse) and then forget it for a couple of days whilst it syncs and sorts itself out. To be on the safe side, we started up the generator, put the charger on 35amp and left it running most of the day - in theory the batteries will have gotten as close to 100% as possible. I've not been back to the boat yet to check but will tomorrow night now my hand is usable again.
Until next time...
3 comments:
Hi there Looking forward to seeing Ellis progress - looks good so far. Can you tell us where you got your bootlace ferrules from and what size you used for your 240 cables?
Gary and Della
Hi there, I bought a box from CEF in Wakefield for circa 30 quid... there are LOADS of different sizes in it - I was very scientific in my selection... ie I ended up using the ones that would fit over the wire lol - for those with single connetions (the earths) I used the orange ones and the ones with twin wires (one in, one out as it were) needed the larger green ones I think from memory. The box has WAY too many small ones in that I'll never find a use for. If you're local you're welcome to have a ferret in my box and nick a few.
Mark.
Thanks Mark.
Unfortunately we are in the Midlands at the moment near Rugby, and as we live on board and don't have a car we can't drop in to see you - but thanks for the offer - hopefully we will meet up on the cut sometime! We looked up CEF and they have a branch right near us so Gary will pop in to see them.
Keep up the good work on the boat we will watch with interest!
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