Plans gone wonderfully wrong and energy saved

Just back from three lovely days aboard the good ship Herbie although nothing went according to plan.
Firstly we planned to spend most of day 1 getting Herbie up to temperature after being let so long in the cold.  In the event we put on the eberspacher and lit the stove,  and we were toasty warm in less than a couple of hours.

Then I planned to spend a couple of hours erecting a tv aerial (using aluminium brackets that I made last week - sometimes I amaze myself) and fiddling with the aerial for ages to try and get the new tv tuned in.  In the event the aerial mount took 5 minutes and I pointed it vaguely in the same direction as aerials on nearby boats.  When I turned on the new tv it muttered to itself for another 5 minutes then burst into life with 20 odd channels tuned in perfectly!

Then we planed to settle down quietly for a couple of days reading with perhaps a walk thrown in.  In the event we got a phone call from Carrie (Blackbird) who was in the area and we met her for lunch on Wednesday and her and Simon for lunch on Thursday, and then we went out for a meal with neighbour Glynn for a meal last night. So our quiet retreat turned out to be a happy social event. I think we're really going to miss our local social boaty network when we move up to Crick in the Spring.

It seems that all our efforts to be more power efficient are paying off.  Apart from a sharp fall in battery level over the hour or two that the eberspacher was on, our LED lights and TV / radio  etc. used no more power than the solar panel generated so the battery level stayed stable for over two days.  Not bad for the low light and short days of mid January.

The new TV is amazingly good, great picture, low power consumption, no inverter needed, no satellite aligning to do (its a freeview set).  perhaps it'll keep us out of the pub more!