Work, weather, cards

Engine heating problem solved, we're now in a weather system that's blowing a hoolie across the marina pond, creating waves and taking boats sideways against their will down to the service platform, there to stay until the next lull. There was a lull one evening.

Never mind the wind, though. There's still work to be done on board.

The taffrail had been looming over us for weeks; months, maybe. For those who don't know, the taffrail is a rail around the stern, the very back of the boat, acting to prevent people from falling off. It looks as though it could be a good place to sit, but to do so is considered potentially very dangerous. We know of several cases of the skipper being knocked off backwards by branches overhanging the water, or low bridges. There have been fatalities.

Our taffrail is wooden, and sits on a metal frame. Both had been subjected to years of rain and, we discovered, lack of adequate waterproofing. The wooden rail is made out of  several pieces joined together end to end by wooden "biscuits" in opposing slots. These had rotted, and needed to be replaced, after which the renewed rail had to have several coats of paint, as did the metal frame on which it sits. Grace bravely took on this task. It was slow and laborious but, finally, the taffrail was reinstalled yesterday, while the wind was a little less fierce.

(The apparent stain on the surface is, in fact, the shadow of the rope above it)

I may have mentioned before that we've ordered a new cratch cover - the canopy over the well-deck at the front of the boat. The current one is seven years old; not really ancient, but badly attacked by mould and incontinent birds over the past years while we've been away from her.

The current cover the day it was fitted

AJ Canopies have measured up for the new cover, and say it should be fitted in July. We visited them in Braunston yesterday, to decide on the colour. We wanted it to be the same blue as we have at the moment, but found that none of the blues is available because of their popularity during a world-wide shortage of blue dye. The best alternative, and the one we ultimately chose, is actually a dark blue - Midnight Blue Tweed. We assume that it's not as popular as the other blue fabrics, but we're very happy with it.

Today it's persisting down. Our friends aboard Lyndsey Ann had intended starting a short cruise today. Wisely, they've postponed.

For us, card games. We live an exciting life!

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Three Kindle best-sellers and one waiting for the honour!

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Braunston was busy...

Wednesday morning graced us with a warm, sunny sky, and we set off down to the junction and turned west towards Braunston. We'd been passed by very few boats in either direction, so we anticipated an uninterrupted journey through Braunston Tunnel and down the locks.

It wasn't quite like that, though, but never mind. It was a lovely day, we shared the locks with friendly folk on NB King's Gambit, and the hold-ups did nothing to take the smiles off our faces. 

We'd been asked to moor as close to AJ Canopies' base as we could, but Braunston was busy - it usually is - and we finally found a mooring quite a distance from ideal, right down by Braunston Turn, opposite The Boathouse restaurant.

I called AJ to tell them where we were, and one of their team arrived soon after. He did a great job on our cratch cover, and left within an hour. Grace went out for a stroll, to recce our winding at the junction the next morning, Business done, we'll go back to the marina now.

*******

"The poor old thing needs a wash."

It took me a few seconds of arm-pit sniffing, and an "Uh?" to Grace to make me realise she wasn't talking about me. We were part-way up Watford Locks, moored at the side of the pond above the second lock, waiting for a succession of  boats to pass on their way down.

It was Kantara she was talking about, and she wasn't wrong. I disguised my deep sigh by sniffing my armpits again. Washing our sixty-foot home doesn't come in my top fifty "really cool things to do on a narrowboat."

We were on our way down to Braunston, home of AJ Canopies with whom we've booked for them to replace several broken press-fasteners on our cratch cover.

We set out on Tuesday morning. The weather was summertime, and the living was easy. There were even fish jumping for the sake of those of us who know the song.

  

It's a long story involving a flight to Reykjavik, a potential drug mule and a knitted mouse, so I won't bore you with it here. Suffice it to say that we had Fluffy on board. It wouldn't be wrong to say he's seen better days, but he'd never seen one like this before.

The wait at the top of Watford Locks was far shorter that we'd expected. They've been extremely busy recently.

We moored in the early afternoon just up from Norton Junction. We were in no hurry. AJ Canopies were expecting us to be with them late afternoon on Wednesday.

I've lost count of the number of times we've moored opposite this ancient British Waterways works butty, or the two a little further down.

It's a very popular stretch of mooring, so we were lucky to get a space.

*******

Lockdown day 27 - Just social distancing/lockdown stuff...

It's a strange thing, isn't it, that a visit to a local shop has become a big deal? We went to Co-op again yesterday. It was Grace's turn to queue for twenty minutes and go looking for a week's provisions, and she came out another twenty minutes later with four bagfuls (bagsful?); a shopping list's worth plus things she saw that we'd not thought of before. (It's strange, too, that I even feel the need to write about it. Perhaps I have too much time on my hands.)

It would have been nice to use some of this shut-down time to get a few jobs done on the boat, but there have been problems of course. The leaky rinse pipe in the loo can't be fixed without the fixer coming down into the boat, and we wouldn't want that any more than he/she would. AJ Canopies have told me that, because of the social distancing issue, they won't send anyone out to replace the broken fasteners on our cratch cover. It's sort of understandable, but this is a job that's done entirely outside of the boat, and we could remain inside and be five or more metres away from their worker. Never mind, it'll keep. Kantara's not about to go anywhere.

Simon, on the other hand was happy to come out to take a look at our apparent 12 volt electrical fault - a "low voltage" warning light and buzzer which kept on lighting and buzzing when there was clearly no low voltage problem. The job was almost entirely carried out in the open air, and we kept our distance down in the dinette, so we all felt comfortable. Simon had already looked at this problem some months ago while we were back in St Albans, and he'd found a loose connection which he fixed. On this occasion, he could find nothing wrong. He checked everything, and voltages were spot on everywhere. The starter battery could have been better charged, he said. That was it. But it was reassuring to know that there was nothing wrong apart from the annoying warning alarm, and this is solved easily simply by turning the power monitoring system off. Over the next couple of days I ran the engine for an hour to charge the starter battery, and we've heard nothing from the warning system since then. Hats off to Simon!

I've dropped meditation off my list of things to do each day. I simply wasn't doing it, and I think the reason may have something to do with my coffee rituals, which achieve much the same thing in a more pleasing way: relaxation in a very pleasant, peaceful environment; fresh air and the sounds of the birds; music to please me; time to ponder undisturbed; coffee. Add to those the daily time of on-line prayer with our St Albans church, and I think I get all that meditation is supposed to deliver - and more besides.

I have a new way of getting back to sleep if I'm having broken slumbers at night. Apart from running through the alphabet and thinking of names of famous people (musicians, actors, artists) that begin with each letter in turn, I tried last night to recall the names of the boats that sit in berths opposite me when I sit at the end of the pontoon. Bob Doubles, Andante, ? , Auntie Rincal, The Pozzy, Charlton, Firecrest, Six Belles, Crusoe, ? , Heidi, Achernar, ? , Tuesday Evening. The question marks are for boats whose names I can't see. It worked last night, but I can't swear I got them all right.

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List of jobs to do this time last week

List of jobs to do this time last week
Clean Bubble stove and adjust it so that it burns cleanly
Buy and run new cable for TV aerial
Spring-clean
Major food shopping (NOT panic-buying!)
Fit new catches on various cupboard doors
Replace old-and-getting-dangerous fan heater
Deep-clean well-deck
Get AJ Canopies to replace broken cratch cover fasteners
Publish my new book

List of jobs still to do
Spring-clean
Fit new catches on various cupboard doors
Deep-clean well-deck
Get AJ Canopies to replace broken cratch cover fasteners (I've emailed them, but had no reply)
Publish my new book (I've tried, but the Kindle Direct Publishing website is giving me grief. I'm awaiting help from their support team)

The thing is, when the weather's as bad as it's been recently, I don't really feel like doing that sort of thing. I'd far rather be reading and writing, listening to music, learning Italian, watching TED Talks, playing brain-games... So I've been very glad of the beautiful breaks in the weather to give me the oomph I need to get up and go!

The temperature in the saloon at the moment (16:30) is 25°C, and there has been no heating on for over five hours. We woke up to 8°!

As for my book, readers of this blog post are the first to hear about it. It's not about our boating experiences like my previous ones have been. This one's a novel, I loved writing it, and it's been given the thumbs up by beta-readers.

"They chose a narrowboat, and canal life changes things. It changes people, too. And dogs."

It'll be available alongside my other publications at the Kindle Store, hopefully soon!

Soaring temperatures!

Ok, so the rest of the nation is making the same comment, too, but... What crazy weather we have! Summer started late, lots of false starts, and, now it's finally here with some conviction, it's too flipping hot! The kind of heat that stops us being able to get on with the things we want to do.

Washing the boat, for a start. I got up early on the first day I attempted this feat, just so that the hull would not have had time to be heated under the blazing sun. I was too late! I washed the side against the pontoon, but found it was already drying too quickly. That was Sunday. On Monday, we turned Kantara around so that I could wash the other side. Same problem. We turned it around again the next day, to get another go at the job, then back again afterwards. The boat's cleaner, but not as clean as I would have liked.

But it's interesting, being berthed the other way around now. It puts the bow out into the pond and further away from the comings and goings of cars and pedestrians. We've eaten out on the foredeck a few times now, and it's very pleasant. We're getting to know the ducks, too!

Views from the front deck now...

 

...and previously.

 

Washing the boat, I discovered a bit of damage sustained while we were out on the cut. I remember it happening, although I didn't know the full extent of it at the time. As Grace drove the boat away from a mooring on our last morning out, she had to steer to avoid an oncoming boat whose driver was a little shaky, and, as a result, dragged the stern starboard along the metal banking. It was broken, however, with a horizontal crosspiece sticking out, and Kantara scraped past this with a horrible noise - a ventilation grille being ripped off the side of our engine compartment, as it turned out.

Yes, the paintwork needs to be finished, too!

I have a spare grille, but not the wherewithal to rivet it on, so Colin's coming on Friday to do it for us.

Yesterday, we took our cratch cover to a company in Braunston, to have it repaired. It had developed holes where it was constantly rubbing against the corners of the cabin, and these were getting worse by the week. We've just collected the repaired cover - £30 very well spent! We'll be going back to AJ in a few weeks' time, to get them to fit fasteners along the bottom of the cover so that we can fasten it firmly to the hull. At the moment, the bottom edges of the cover tend to billow in or out when it's windy, letting in water if it's raining. And the stresses of that billowing can't be good for it either. Furthermore, when it snows, the whole cover sags badly, again exerting unwanted stresses. Fastening the bottom will overcome all of these problems.

It's time we checked the fluid levels in the batteries. That's Grace's job - she's smaller and bendier than me for getting into a very restricted space!

The flowers and herbs on the roof are loving the weather, and the tomato plants look as if they'll be giving us fruit soon, too.

Yes, I KNOW the gangplank needs to be painted!