Oops–there goes the fire

I haven’t had a fire yet, not least because I quite like to allow myself to acclimatise to a reasonable temperature to ensure that the really cold weather of winter doesn’t come as too much of a shock. However, the damp in the air and the final reading of around 10degrees on the thermometer prompted me to light the fire. I had cleaned the fire and checked its integrity at the end of last season and other than the cracked fire bricks, everything seemed fine.  So it came to fire lighting day – the fire bricks had finally arrived and so I set about installing them and going the final ‘is it alright still’ checks…it was all going very well until the back plate  fell out.

The back plate falling out is a fine opportunity to see the fire surround from a unique angle but the ‘open fire’ look is not the one I am aiming for on the boat. Here is the view from the front of the boat through to the outside!

Needless to say I have not lit a fire. Boots and I have extra layers on (no bad thing) and I am going to plate the back over the next few days.

Sometimes ‘coincidences’ are astonishing. This is another of those ones.