Wednesday was
beautiful. The light had an amazing warm yet bright feel to it, and
the sky was a fabulous shade of blue. It was cold again, though, and
exposed stretches of canal were quite windy. But the countryside of
the Oxford Canal is charming, and cruising was a delight. Thinking
that it's about time – after years of canal holidays, plus the past
year of boat ownership – that I learned how to drive the boat, I
took the helm for a while. I was not going to let Michelle and Mike
out-do me! However, the canal became very winding, and narrow and
shallow in a number of places, so I handed control back to Grace.
We moved on down to
Napton Junction (Wigram's Turn Marina), and stopped at Napton Bottom
Lock for services before ascending the first seven of the locks,
these all in the space of a little over a mile. Again, we seemed to
be the only boat going up, with numerous craft descending, and we
found all of the locks empty and ready for Grace to glide Kantara
straight in.
We stopped for a late
lunch after lock 14, but then decided to stay for the night.
We have
had a minor problem with our propeller shaft gland dripping too much
water into its bilge. This can usually be dealt with by using the
bilge pump, but we found that afternoon that the bilge pump was not
working. Looking into the pool of water in the bilges, it was
apparent that it had a lot of grease in it – grease is pumped
manually into the stern gland to slow the dripping of water – and
the bilge pump, too, was quite covered in a film of it.
Removing the pump and
dismantling it, we washed it in hot, detergent water, and baled the
water out of the bilge manually. The pump was then put back together
and tested, and successfully pumped the bucket of hot water empty. I
tightened the two nuts on the stern gland and, as I write, there has
been no further dripping. The problem I have with these two nuts is
that it is easy to over-tighten them to the point where damage is
done, and I have no way of knowing how tight is right. So we proceed
with care. If the propeller shaft becomes too hot to touch, then I
will know that I've tightened the nuts too much. I hope it won't come
to that.
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