First steps

On November 4th 2020, Grace and I left Kantara expeditiously to go back to our house for the duration of the just-announced lockdown. We've returned from time to time to make sure she's okay, but we've not even slept in her since that day; until last Sunday. We're back!

This is the start of our move back onto the boat. It's only the first steps. We still need to go back to the house a few times, but it's our intention to be based here for the rest of the year. And it's so good to be here! Kantara's in need of a fair bit of TLC, and this is what we've been administering from the moment we arrived; mostly dusting and de-spidering yesterday. We're always amazed how much dust gets into the cabin when all of the windows are closed. It has to be due to the six "mushroom" ventilators down the length of the roof. And they have been subjected to a lot of wind in past months.

Our first night was a cold one. The Bubble stove wouldn't light, and we don't trust the ancient Alde gas boiler not to leak. We were snuggly warm in bed, but awoke to an internal 1 degree° C. We tried everything we could think of, including posting calls for help on several boaters' forums on Facebook. Lots of advice, but sadly no solutions yet. All I could find wrong was that the filter was very dirty, but cleaning it made no difference. This happened to us back in 2013, when a day's cruise did the job - we think it must have been the vibrations of the engine that did it. We'll try that soon!

It was lovely and warm for the next two days, and we got a lot of work done. The green algae on the roof looks awful, but was easily removed with soapy water. While I was doing that, Grace cleaned the windows inside and out, and washed the net curtains. The blinds got vacuum cleaned.

It's a start. The roof's not quite finished, the cabin sides need to be cleaned and waxed, the paintwork needs a fair bit of touching-up, and the Bubble stove needs to be professionally serviced. But we're back. We have no specific plans for cruising, except that we will cruise. We simply have ideas as to where we travel. I expect we'll play it by ear. The map is out, and so will we be!

PS I just got the stove working!

We're not going out...

We're not going out, not staying in,

Just running around with my head in a spin;
But there is no need to scream and shout;

We're not going out.
We are not going out.

I'll fess up and say that I've been tempted several times recently to suggest to Grace that we throw caution all over the place, bite the bullet (does anyone actually do that?) and go out for an extended cruise. Other people are doing it, I reason, so why not us? We've been out for a couple of short trips in the past weeks, and it's been fine. Let's do it!

And then I read the paper and see that the coronavirus is spreading again, and I change my mind. No way do I want to risk us having to lock down on the boat somewhere miles from anywhere. And anyway, if we were out cruising at the moment, we wouldn't be doing the work we started yesterday. There's no way it would be done if we were cruising.

The paint on the cratch frame had started to crack and peel in places, and the wood was in danger of getting wet, and rotting, so it was a good time to take it all down, sand the woodwork, re-paint it all - and fit a new tunnel-light while we're about it.

Kantara looks and feels very odd with the well-deck exposed!

And while the cover is off, she'll get the wash and polish she so badly needs, the poor old thing.

We still have bodywork paint to finish touching up, and will happily go out for a few days from time time to time to complete that, as we did a few weeks ago, but beyond that, we're staying put.

But now the weather's turned, and the painting job has had to be brought in to stay dry.

Once upon a time, we were simply a tad untidy, but now...

Sarah and Trevor returned yesterday, having been to Stratford-upon-Avon. They'd had a good cruise and thoroughly enjoyed it, but our illustrious Prime Minister was due to address the nation that evening, to announce new measures to reduce the spread of the virus, and they didn't want to risk being locked down in their boat somewhere out on the cut. They'd hurried back, just in case.

As it happened, Johnson didn't impose the lockdown, but hasn't ruled out the future possibility. We're glad to be here, but a bit annoyed that our efforts over the past few days have been rewarded with a downward turn in the weather. We awoke this morning to 16° in the boat. What a blessing the Bubble stove is!

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"Time is a storm in which we are all lost" - William Carlos Williams

I've heard several people say that lockdown - version one, that is; the one in which we were quite severely restricted - changed time itself. Each successive day felt like the previous one. That was our experience, too. But add that to the pre-existent phenomenon of "boaters' time", and we now find ourselves temporally challenged to an extreme degree. What makes things worse still is that, some weeks ago, we changed our daily eating routine to one in which dinner is eaten two or three hours earlier than what's been normal for the past forty-seven years. There is a very good reason for that, though it'd be really difficult to explain outside of a lengthy discussion. But time's confusing. Suffice it to say that I've started to wear again the watch that had lived in a drawer for years, and we both have to check the time and the day far more often than ever before.

Storm Ellen just added to my confusion. Again, each successive day felt like the previous one. The weather was the same every day, following much the same pattern, and neither of us ventured outside the boat at all save for a brief walk to the end of the jetty in the evening when conditions were generally better. One may attribute this befuddlement to the fact that my memory's never been fantastic, and/or that I'm sixty-nine next month, but I can't say with any certainty when the storm struck, nor how long it lasted if, indeed, it's over now. All I do remember is the torrential rain, the vicious, gusty wind, and the skies they left behind during the brief respites.

I'll never forget those.

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Lockdown day 72 - Well, that was different!

It's nothing I usually get excited about, believe me, but we've just driven nine miles to Hilmorton for the nearest petrol station - and back, of course. It's the furthest we've been away from Kantara since the start of the lockdown. And everything out there appeared... well, normal; the old normal. There was a sign at the Esso station promising that the nozzles on the pumps were disinfected regularly, and customers distanced socially at the pay desk, but... I suppose I don't really know what I expected. We've been very isolated, I guess. Driving there and back really made quite a change!

For better or worse, our isolation has made fairly trivial things more important to me, as you'll discover from what follows.

Sow Thistles bordering the road up to the marina

"Stay in a nice, straight line, children!"

If my camera had a polarised lens, you'd clearly see a gathering
of large fish just a few metres out. Just imagine.

I have a thing about anagrams. I'm sort of forced to, the flipping things just squirm their way into my mind with great frequency, sometimes quite annoyingly. I tweeted this the other day...

"Retired" is an anagram of "tireder" and "retried". Just saying.

— NB Kantara (@NBKantara) June 1, 2020

and then realised that it might have made people think that I feel more tired now than I did when I was teaching, and that I'm still feeling as if I'm under the same kind of close scrutiny that teachers are used to. I can assure you that I am not either of those things!

A couple of friends of ours from church are currently locked down in a village school in India. Joanne is the principal there, and Kai is her dad. The school buildings aren't being used for educational purposes in the current situation, so they're being a hostel for around eighty immigrant workers. A baby was born there in the past few days - mother and child are both well - and the infant boy has been named Quarantino! I suspect he might be called Tino or Quaz by the time he's in his teens.

Doing my usual thing at the end of the jetty yesterday, I watched with some amusement a tern washing his face in the pond; repeatedly diving in, very briefly submerging his head then swooping up again. Well, that's what it looked like to me. On one occasion he seemed rather surprised when he came up with a fish in his beak. He didn't seem to know quite what to do with it, so he dropped it. Then, it seemed, he realised that he'd been missing the opportunity for an afternoon snack and set about doing some serious fishing.

Was it him who then decorated our cratch cover as only birds can? I shouldn't have laughed at him.

(photo - birdguides.com)

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Lockdown day 56 - The lady's not for shafting!

shaft: (informal) To treat (someone) harshly or unfairly. (Oxford English Dictionary)

After witnessing the brutish mating of a pair of swans the other day/week/month (isn't time very strange at the moment?) I laughed a lot yesterday at the sight of a female moorhen giving a would-be mate the runaround. She clearly wasn't keen on her suitor, and left him in no doubt about her refusal. He would start with the normal approach - swim up from behind and attempt to mount her - but she, swimming away from him, simply waited until he was very close, then dived beneath the surface. The male would stop and look baffled until she resurfaced some distance away. Being a bird of little brain, he would think, "Ahaa! Got her!" and make chase again. Of course, she would simply repeat her trick, but this time, instead of popping up again in front of him, she'd appear to his left, his right, behind him; never the same place twice in succession. 

Eventually, he lost heart and slunk off to find a more compliant hen, and she, laughing loudly (and a moorhen has a fiendish laugh), flew away in search of more refined company. She's not one to be messed with!

(photo from www.birdspot.co.uk - I was laughing too much to take my own)

Yelvertoft Moorers received an email from management yesterday explaining how the new lockdown regulations apply here on the marina.

1) Visiting will be by APPOINTMENT ONLY.
2) Visits are only allowed between 9am & 4pm.
3) No overnight stays on the boat, and you must vacate the marina by 4pm.
4) No cruising. (canals are closed at the moment)
5) The 2-metre rule on pontoons and Marina grounds remain in effect. Outside activity is limited, no barbecues etc.
6) Please respect other moorers wishes. (several have the 12 week isolation letter, and may avoid you like the plague)
7) If you are showing any symptoms of Covid 19, please stay away.

It's all very sensible and straightforward. There's not much of change apart from the addition of numbers 1 to 3, welcomed by several who took advantage straight away of the chance to check that their boat is okay. Two of those were Jan and Ed from EJ on the other side of our jetty, and they were very happy.

I was chuffed to receive from the editor of Towpath Talk a copy of Les Heath's review of Out of the sunrise as it appears in the latest edition.

You can have a look for yourselves - and read a sample - here. I'm told it's a good read!

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Lockdown day 52 - Hares and regulations

Apparently, we have a family of hares living on the marina. I've only seen one, an adult, probably the male. They live under the office building which is built on a platform on sloping ground, so there's lots of space for them. I don't think I've seen more than ten all my life, so it was a pleasant surprise for me when I saw this one. Unusually, I didn't have my camera with me.

(photos from unsplash.com)

The new lockdown regulations as they apply to us as boaters are pretty much no different from previous ones in our opinion. The Canal & River Trust have recently sent this out...

From today, Weds 13 May 2020
Private boaters may undertake short boating trips – avoiding use of locks and any staff-operated structures if possible – providing, as per current government guidance, they do not stay away from home overnight and return to their home mooring (where they have one).
From Saturday, 23 May:
Mooring exemptions will come to an end and our guidance for continuous cruisers comes back in to force. This doesn’t mean that every boat without a home mooring needs to move on this day, just that we expect it to move off its current mooring within 14 days (i.e. by 6 June). Boaters in a high-risk group who need to continue to shield or self-isolate can agree special arrangements with their licence support officer if they haven’t already done so.
From Monday, 1 June:
On this date, we anticipate that our navigations will re-open in full, subject to some local exceptions, making longer journeys possible.

Life goes on as new normal for us. We'd love to be cruising, of course we would, but everyone's safety from infection is important, so we'll be happy to stay here for as long as it takes. We could do a short trip out and back for a day, but I reckon this stretch of the Grand Union - the summit of the Leicester Arm, just 20 miles long - will be packed silly by those who have less patience than us.

There is much ongoing bickering amongst boaters on social media; those who think CRT's interpretation of the government regulations is wrong, and who bloody well ARE going to start cruising now, and those who see the sense in waiting until the infection and daily mortality rates fall. Personally, I don't think we'll hit the 1st June target. So be it.

Now here's a strange thing. I took a photo the other day, through the saloon window; the beginning of a fabulous sunset. In fact, I took two - click, move a bit, click. Then I downloaded them onto my laptop, and this is what I found.

Remarkable, isn't it? A work of art, except it wasn't intentional. It was some odd glitch in the camera, I suppose. The second photo was how I expected them both to be; an okay photo of... well you can see for yourself.

I've posted the arty one in a number of Facebook groups, and the response has been overwhelming. Perhaps I could sell it, and it would adorn the living-room walls of art-lovers everywhere!

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