galadhir

Well, we had a lovely holiday last week, going out on Son's boat. The weather was sunny and cool - ideal really, except for the wind. Canal boats are essentially flat bottomed barges, and have no keel to resist being blown about by the wind. If the wind is above about 25 miles per hour you will find yourself fighting several tons of boat on the end of a thin rope.

Normally that's possible, because, again - flat bottom = easy to move around on the water. But if you're fighting the wind, the wind will win.

So, first day was a case of fighting with all our might to get up the river Trent, to get through the locks and onto the canal. It took us hours and we must have moved about four miles. We were then shattered and decided not to move the next day, but just to have a useful day pottering about doing things.

I had promised Son that I would paint the bows of the boat, which - on narrowboats - usually contain colourful designs of crescent moon, diamonds, sun, maybe a daisy-wheel, that sort of thing. Son had requested manuscript illustrations instead, so I had come armed with the drawings and the paint, and on that first day I managed to do the pink outline and the swan on the Port side (the side I could reach from the bank.)

DH fixed a light in the shower, which had been flickering, and for which he had to trace back the wiring to the skirting board, where it was revealed to have been worn back to bare metal.

After this useful day we walked to a nearby pub and had dinner, and it was all very nice and civilized and exactly what you want of a boating holiday.

The next day we made good time and I think I was steering the boat through the locks - doing the steering because we thought that would be better for my fibro than the heavy work of operating the locks. The responsibility is scary though! What if I can't get into the bank properly and have to leave DH abandoned on the side of the canal? What if I sink Son's boat?

I know I am going to have to get comfortable with this. And also comfortable with steering while sitting on the roof, because it's the only way we'll be able to cope with the physical demands of canal boating in future, but right now I am a bundle of nerves about it.

Anyway, we did eventually manage to get to Mercia Marina, and thought we would tie up to a visitor mooring there. Which was great because they had a grocery shop and restaurants/cafes, and the pontoon they moored us on allowed me access to the Starboard side of the boat.

So I spent another day painting the Starboard side. And then there was a 35 mph wind warning for the next day, so we stayed over and washed down the roof, decks and gunwhales.

Meanwhile DH discovered the location of the suspected oil and coolant leaks in the engine.

This is momentous, because we often come back to the boat to discover the engine bay absolutely awash in oily liquid, which we assumed was water coming in from somewhere - not exactly what you want in a boat. But Son had also noticed that she went through coolant by the gallon, and I had advanced the theory that perhaps the liquid filling up the engine bay was coolant rather than water.

Finding the location of both oil and coolant leaks in the engine will make it much easier to fix them, and perhaps she can have a dry well after that! Fingers crossed.

By which time it was time to start off back. We filled up with diesel and emptied the toilet before we left. Then after an easy day of cruising, when I still managed to fall in a hedge and be dragged across the towpath while DH shouted at me to let go and I refused, we moored at a lovely pub which we were warned away from, but which seemed to me to be perfectly lovely. It was very picturesque with a weeping willow and a garden sweeping down to the canal.

Son had mentioned that it was a bit creepy coming home along the towpath when it was pitch black around him, and he had wanted to put up some solar powered fairy lights to greet him and show him where his boat was. So we put those up, and they did indeed look very cheering.

On the last day we're gently going along the canal, passing moored boats on either side, listening to the distinctive throb of our boat's vintage (read - just very old) engine, when there starts to be a weird echo. Kind of a heart beat with a mirror heart beating in time. It gets closer and then we're sliding past a beautiful boat still in the livery of one of the 19th Century coal carriers.

I raise my hand and wave it excitedly at the guy at the tiller. "Same engine noise! Is it a Russel Newbury?"

"It is!" he beams. "Nothing like them!"

Which was - as Tumblr would call it - a 'same hat' moment, and oddly satisfying. A nice, geeky way to end a very productive week.

They say 'be careful what you wish for' and I should have known better than to make a goal to learn to hope. How do you learn to hope? You get put in many situations where you have to practice hope...

Friday, I was peacefully going through my morning routine when DH texts the family group chat to ask if Son is okay, what with the flood warning.

• Son is like 'oh heck! I'm not actually at the boat. Would I lose the boat in a flood? Should I buy enough food to survive if I'm marooned on the boat and go and be on it?'
• I'm like, 'no, you shouldn't! You should stay somewhere where you'll be safe.'
• DH is like, 'maybe you should! If you were on the boat, you could lengthen the ropes if the floating pontoon reached the top of its range, and at least it wouldn't risk tipping sideways and filling with water and sinking.'
• Son and I are like 'Yeah, but what if it's swept out of the marina onto the river and Son ends up unable to find anywhere to moor up and can't sleep because he has to be on the tiller or the boat sinks with him on it? We don't fancy that!'
• And I'm like 'well, I suppose you do also have an anchor. You could drop the anchor to keep you in the marina until it subsided again.'

So eventually it was decided that Son would go back to the boat on Friday night. The flood warning said the water would be at the highest on Saturday, and should go down after that, and we decided to hope that the floating pontoons would take the high water in their stride.*

That was an intensive day of active hope, but it did indeed turn out that (so far) the pontoons are coping.

DH and I went over there today to add clips to the solar panel boxes to prevent the solar panels from being blown off again, and Son was like 'Ugh, this door lock is getting stiff.' But we got the solar panels latched down, and the final window covered in window film, and came home.

Then at 10pm when we're sitting watching TV at home, Son texts to say 'I've just arrived back from work and I'm locked out. I can't get this door lock open at all.'

Further panic - we're nearly two hours drive away and we don't have a replacement door lock. Now what?

DH orders a new door lock from Screwfix. Then Son texts back to say 'I bought some WD-40 and sprayed it and now I'm in!'

So now we're going back tomorrow to put a new door lock on.

I know I had the temerity to think there would be less boat work this year, but that was before I remembered that there was still this list of things to do:

• Take the wall panels off the inside (possibly one room at a time)
• See how terribly rusty it is behind them, and sand the rust back to bare metal
• Paint the inside hull with rust resistant paint
• Add insulation
• Put the panels back on.
• Disassemble the current bed and underbed storage, and somehow get it - and the mattress - out of the cabin. Son prefers his sofa-bed in the warm sitting room by the stove, and the bed is taking up so much room. He could use that room as an office if it was gone.
• Cut inspection hole in the floor, so the bilges can be pumped out with a hand pump.
• Do something to stop the front window wooden surround from rotting
• Get the hull re-blacked below the gunwales
• Somehow plug the holes in the doors/hatch arrangement which currently allow rain into the engine room
• Get an engineer out to fix the engine idle rate and check the engine mountings
• Put a better hatch/door lock on.

It will be years before this is all done!

*Son's friend also has a boat, moored in a marina closer to London, and they received an evacuation warning. So that confirms my initial thought that the correct thing to do - if your boat is in the way of an oncoming flood - is to leave it and go somewhere safer. Next time we will know :)

Blimey. It seems I haven't made an entry since 13th July when we turned the boat round and revealed the new paint job to Fox's boatyard.

That was three and a half months ago, and since then we have finished the paint job including all the decks and doors.

( Read more... )

So much achieved, so much still to go!

Ugh, the whole 'moving the boat across the country so we could put it in a wet-dock in order to sand it down to bare metal and then repaint it' lark was going so well. Today, however, the tiller has snapped off.

Thank God it didn't happen tomorrow on the tidal stretch of the river, but it still makes me wonder what other problems are lurking in the superstructure of this badly neglected boat.

After many engine woes, and despite the fact that Jem at the boatyard still hasn't managed to fix the idle rate so that the boat will tick over in neutral, we went down to Bates Boatyard yesterday to pick up the boat and take it away.

It went into the boatyard in September, to have the hull fixed and blacked, and the sacrificial anodes replaced. They finished doing that in about a fortnight. After which they began on the indoor work. (Making the gas piping legal and safe, fixing the shower, replacing the batteries and installing an inverter that could handle heating water for the shower.)

They did all of that by November, and we were planning to get it back then, and looking for heated sheds we could rent to do the painting. And then - when they were checking the stove to make sure it was not emitting carbon monoxide, they discovered the roof was rusted through where the stove pipe went through. So now the boat had to go back into dry dock to have the roof welded.

At that point I think, they had a look at the engine, which we had noted could not be run in neutral without stalling out. This makes mooring up very difficult. So we had asked them if they could see a way to correct the engine's idle rate. Unfortunately, as they were investigating this, the engine overheated badly, and they realized the boat could not be moved and the engine would need to be stripped to find out the cause of the overheating.

(It turned out that a couple of the pistons had been put in upside down! There was literally nothing on this boat that had been done properly.)

Of course, they hadn't budgeted time for doing engine repairs on top of everything else. So now they were having to fit in trying to repair the engine around the other jobs they had scheduled. And now it was the deepest cold of the year, the boat was frozen in, and it had been there, unheated, unoccupied, for five whole months.

(Of course the pipes burst during that time, and the boatyard had to fix those too.)

Given all that. It really wasn't in that bad a nick when we got it back.

There were some signs that people had been walking around in it in dirty boots. Son had forgotten at any point to empty the toilet, which was now disgusting. (He has a capsule toilet, and we had to lift it out, including contents, and carry it to the car to be brought home to clean.) And a lot of the bedding was moldy.

Fortunately Son had decided not to go straight back to living on board, so we have brought the moldy stuff home to be washed/thrown out as appropriate.

We moved it down a flight of six locks and found a new mooring spot just outside Tring.

• Slight panic as the engine heated up and started smoking.
• back to the boatyard to ask about the smoke
• Jem looks at it and says it's probably just that the insulating wrappings around the exhaust pipe have got wet and are now steaming dry.
• we all agree that that's what it looks like too.
• Proceed with journey and are reassured that the smoking stops almost immediately.

The locks are only just open after being out of order over the winter, and we proceed through them in a measured and professional way. (Son at the tiller, Daughter and I manning the windlasses, opening and closing the locks.)

At the final lock a family with two small children, taking a walk along the towpath, come to watch the fun. Daughter and I explain how you have to wind the paddles of the gates up so that the water can come in and fill the lock; how you can only open the gates once the water level in the lock is the same as the water level under the boat.

We attempt to open the lock. It will not shift.

Twilight is falling. The countryside around us is silvery blue. A flight of geese passes overhead in a skirring 'v' formation.

Water is still coming into the lock, but the gates won't open. Daughter and I throw our whole backs and thighs into trying to push it. Onlookers' two children decide to help too and push with all their might while their parents look fondly on.

Eventually the parents join in too and are astonished to feel for themselves that it is just not possible to get these gates to budge.

Finally I think to myself "there's clearly still water coming in, so why isn't the water level equalizing?" and at that point I realize, "maybe it's because the water is going out through the lower gates?" I check the paddles on the lower gates, and sure enough the previous people who came this way have left them half way up.

Daughter and I roll them down, and before I can even get back to the gates, the two young infants have opened it all by themselves.

Major triumph for me and for two small children :)

That's the last lock and we're losing the light, so we moor up. I am feeling good, although exhausted. This is my first day covid -ve and it has involved quite a lot of heavy labour. Fortunately, there's a car park very close, so Daughter gets on Son's bicycle and cycles back down the towpath to fetch her car.

We load the car with moldy bedding and double-bin-bag-wrapped toilet. Then walk across the road and get a really nice, very spicy vegetable chilli and chips from the Angler's Retreat pub, before driving home.

Arrive home at 9.30pm ish with every fibromyalgic inch of my body protesting, feeling accomplished.

Today I can barely stand up, and I have promised to thoroughly wash out and bleach that toilet, but it was still worth it. It is so nice to finally have the boat back!