We'll be back!

After the excitement of a family Christmas, the laziness of New Year's Eve and the physical effort involved in the clearing of thirty years of "stuff" from our loft (the result of which really gave us a great buzz) we pretended that the job was complete, ignored the fact that there was a queue of said stuff waiting untidily on the landing to be taken to the recycling centre, and headed off to the marina.

Having failed last month to fill Kantara's fuel tank (the ice was too thick for her to get across to the service platform, remember?) we returned on Tuesday, confident in the knowledge that the ice was long gone. A max/min thermometer in the saloon showed that the temperature had been down to -3℃, so the first thing was to fire up the central heating, then pour a glass of wine, sit down and enjoy the peace and quiet. The boats on either side of us were empty, and the nearest human habitation was on a couple of boats right up the other end of the pontoon. We almost felt lonely.

A strong, gusty wind blew throughout the night, knocking Kantara against the pontoon and rocking her quite forcefully, but we slept well and woke to a calmer morning. There wasn't much for us to do on the boat, apart from test the smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, and do the monthly routine of shaking our fire extinguishers to prevent the powder from caking in the bottom of the cylinders.

Feeling the need to get out for a while the next day, we drove into Rugby. All we wanted was a new cryptic crossword book; we'd completed our latest tome before we came away, and couldn't do without one any longer. We've been doing a crossword every day before rising since we started our boaty life back in 2011. WH Smith had just what we wanted, and Grace couldn't turn down the offer of a couple of jigsaw puzzles in a clearance sale there. Job done.

The next morning, we ran the engine, checked Kantara over, lubricated the stern hatch runners, which had seized up and were stopping us from opening the hatch, and looked despondently at the huge areas of  green algae on the roof. Next time we're there, we'll have to wash that off, and I'm not looking forward to it. I just hope it hasn't permanently stained the paintwork,

Second in a queue of three, we nipped across to the diesel pump and filled the tank to the very top. A strong wind was blowing us sideways against the platform, so getting back to our mooring was going to be something of a challenge but, after a bow-spring to point the stern into the wind, Grace reversed past the berth, then powered forwards into it. Easy-peasy.

Excitement over, we packed our few bits and pieces, kissed the boat goodbye, and drove home to complete the loft job. We'll be back!

Update of Addendum blog.

For owners of "Hints and tips for life with your feet under water", there's a new addition to the Addendum blog.

"Update to Chapter 6 – Miscellany"

The link's at the back of the book, remember.

Frozen in!

It was time to run the Webasto heater. To ensure its continuing health, the system has to be run for at least an hour every month. I've said that before, yes? So we visited Kantara on Friday to do just that. The inside of the boat was only three degrees above freezing, but the small electric heater and the dehumidifier were doing their job, and not using silly amounts of electricity (the price of which, of course, has recently increased considerably). 

I said we visited "to do just that", but in fact we wanted to top up the diesel tank to the very top. This is so that there's no space for condensation to form, causing water to drip into the fuel and making an infestation of diesel bug more likely. We've had that once, and want very much to avoid it! This is what it eventually does to the boat's fuel filter.

There was ice on the marina pond, but it was very thin, and easily broken with a bamboo stick. So off we set for what would be Kantara's last trip of the year - just a few tens of metres to the service platform. It didn't happen. As Grace put the engine in gear to reverse out of the berth, it became obvious that the ice was far too thick for us to move. We'd made the mistake of testing the ice at the front of the boat where the water is sheltered a little from the frost. Just sixty feet away, our stern was firmly iced in.

Let's hope January will let us do the job. Have a Happy Christmas, and a very much better New Year!

Christmas 2016 on board Kantara.

Birds of a feather part II

Sad to say, this is my very best photo of a kingfisher by the canal. Unusually, it sat in full sight and watched us pass slowly by. More often, they go deep into the tree or bush to hide, or fly away to another such perch further ahead. They dart very fast and low over the water; a flash of amazing colours and great beauty. We've rarely seen more than one at a time.

When they're not hiding from humans, they're likely to be sitting on the lowest branches next to the water, from which they dive to catch fish or insects. They start breeding in their first year. Come mating and egg-laying time, they build a nest in a hollow in the bank of a canal or river.  They work together to dig out the burrow, choosing a vertical bank clear of vegetation, which provides a good degree of protection from predators.

Two or three broods are raised in quick succession. The first clutch of six or seven eggs is laid late in March or early April. Both adults incubate the eggs, and the chicks hatch about nineteen days later. Each chick can eat twelve or so small fish a day, and they're fed in rotation; once a chick is fed, it moves to the back of the nest to digest its meal, and the others move forward.

They're ready to leave the nest when they're about twenty-four days old. Once they leave, they're only fed for four days before the adults drive them out, away from their territory, and start the next brood.

Beautiful, aren't they? I've only just realised that they're related to the Australian kookaburra. Not so beautiful, but they laugh!

(Photos from Unsplash.com)

Birds of a feather

 We had an unusual visitor to our garden yesterday.

Okay, so the photo's not great, sorry. It's from someone's phone, and taken in a hurry. But believe me, it was a heron. It was very interested in our pond, and the newt and frog population might well be smaller today. It stayed there quite a while, and we were beginning to think that it didn't have enough space from which to take off, but it launched itself very quickly when Grace went down the garden to take a closer look.

It got me thinking about herons. Grey herons in particular. We've seen hundreds of them over the years.- maybe thousands, we've not been counting. They can be quite friendly, as is this one that appears to be resident at Berkhamsted Locks on the Grand Union Canal.

Usually, however, they're antisocial. They are waders, but they often stand at the edge of the canal, not in it, alone, hoping to see and spear a fish, and they fly away as soon as a boat approaches too closely. The silly creature hasn't worked out that if he were to fly away in the direction the boat has come from, he (or she) won't be bothered by it again. What he does, though, is to go on ahead of the boat, only to have his fishing disturbed again. And again and again and again. If  instead he wheels away over the trees and into a nearby field, he's on the lookout for small mammals and birds to supplement his fish diet.

Herons nest in big trees, in groups called heronries. These are often habitual sites that are revisited year after year, and may involve dozens of nests, spanning multiple trees. The largest heronry in Britain is currently in Kent, where numbers of nests are between 150 and 200. In this case, birds of a feather most certainly do stick together. They start to nest quite early, and it’s not unusual to see them sitting on eggs in early February, but nesting activity peaks in late March. After the chicks are out of the nest and independent, the male a female adults part company. (There's very little to distinguish between their genders.)

Another waterways bird is the ever-popular kingfisher, but those are far less seen than the heron. I might just blog about these beauties another time.

A brief but worthwhile visit

Back at the boat the following day, our trusty engineer, Colin, replaced the defunct radiator, released the seized valve on another, flushed the the whole system, and filled it with the required antifreeze/water mix and turned on the Webasto. The result was impressive. The rooms heated very quickly, and the hot water, too. The Bubble stove still posed problems, so Colin's seeking advice, but the stove's far from essential, so we're not in a great hurry.

    We topped up our card for our land-line electricity supply at the mooring. Unsurprisingly, the price per kilowatt/hour has gone up alarmingly, as has the cost of diesel and gas We only use gas for cooking, and each 13 kilo bottle lasts for months. Diesel is for the engine, of course, but also for the Webasto heating system, and the Bubble, which won't be used a great deal, anyway.

    We wanted to fill the diesel tank before the winter really sets in. Cold weather can cause water in the air in the tank to condense into the fuel, and that increases the chances of diesel bug growing and infecting it. In time, it can block jets and filters in the engine, and the Webasto heater jets. Filling the fuel tank to the very top gives little space for condensation. There was, however, no way we were going to be able to get across to the services platform in the very strong wind. Well, we'd get across okay, but not back!

   Taking Kantara across to the service platform for diesel is usually very simple. Reverse out of our berth, engage forward gear, point the bow at the platform, pull up alongside and moor. Yesterday, however, the very strong wind made that impossible. Getting over to the fuel pump would have been easy. The wind would probably have aided our travel, but pulling away again would have been out of the question. Many are the times we've seen boats pinned there, sometimes for hours, because of an adverse wind. It's happened to us a couple of times.

    The wind put the kibosh on doing any of the other jobs we had in mind, too. I was nearly blown off the gunnel while I was brushing the top of the cratch cover. A thorough wash of the roof at least was much needed, but the wind stopped us. All we could do was the fire safety checks; testing fire and carbon monoxide alarms, and the pressure in the extinguishers. A good shake up every month stops the powder inside from caking.

    On Thursday, we winterised Kantara, and returned home to the noise and dust of bathroom installers. It would have been lovely to stay and do some cruising, but the wind hadn't abated, and the number of closures and restrictions reported every day suggests that travelling any distance from the marina might well be slow.

    Fingers crossed for next year, eh?

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