Last Friday aftnoon's drive to Liz's parents in south-eastern France was straightforward. Arrived about 5.45 and launched immediately into helping Liz's Dad Reg who we found roped to a tree cutting scrub on an almost vertical bank. He's 83, and I can only hope I'm as fit as that when I'm that age.

The weekend was spent mainly attempting to re-roof the carport where we would be parking Van Rouge for the winter. Luckily the weather was very much in our favour - warm, sunny and calm - but unluckily we had a lot of patch-up work to do on the framing and by late Sunday afternoon it was obvious we weren't going to complete the job.

Liz and I returned on the train Monday morning to Liberty, and during the evening once more were confused by the carbon monoxide alarm sounding. but again investigations showed nothing.

Next day after returning from a shopping trip we were hit by a wave of sulphur as we opened the boat's door. It smelt just like Rotorua, on a bad day. Once more we checked the gas supply etc, and then I lifted the floor panel beneath which the batteries are stored, only to be greeted by acid bubbling out of two of the batteries and gas venting through the caps... very dangerous and highly volatile gas.

We quickly opened all windows and hatches and went up on deck. Obviously something had gone horribly wrong, but what? I knew I hadn't overfilled the batteries and I had used the proper solution.

In short, the last two days have been very tense, with multiple visits from the boat brokerage people to investigate. Yesterday they said the batteries were too hot and dangerous to work on and would need to cool down, but this morning (Wednesday) Philippe and Thierry were bottoms up and heads down as they poked around the battery compartment. They finally identified the problem as being one battery cell that had deteriorated, which caused the other cells in the two batteries (connected together) to overcharge, heat up and almost boil. We are very lucky not to have suffered an explosion.

Those of you reading this who know about batteries will be asking why the boat doesn't have fully sealed deep-cycle batteries. Good question.

Right now as I write this up on the aft deck, Thierry and an accomplice are down below installing two new (safer) batteries, which should solve the problem and - with luck - enable us to get on our way tomorrow morning, two days late and no doubt many Euros lighter.

At the moment though, Liberty seems like an inappropriate name for a boat that is having great difficulty escaping.