the trip back 'home'

We woke up this morning feeling a little the worse for wear. Having had lunch at the pub we were hijacked by son number two who is at Uni here and who got wind of the fact we were moored near his favourite pub. That lad can relieve you of a tenner as he goes past without breaking step! But he is a good boy and he brought his lovely girlfriend down so we spent some time with them - at the pub. Then some friends of ours texted suggesting a 'quick' drink so we told them where we were and right on cue they turned up shortly after we had got back from said pub. Luckily it was only 50 yards away from where we were moored so back we went and several pints later were feeling no pain!!

Unfortunately at 7am the next morning we were feeling plenty, so after a quick breakfast we set off to try and clear our heads in the lovely fresh morning air and with a cup of tea and both of us standing on the stern taking it in turns at the tiller, all was soon well with the world.

We saw plenty of wild life:- a woodpecker, some pheasants, a heron who followed us down the cut and some joggers!

Oh and I've never been this close to a bull before!!

It was an uneventful trip and we didn't meet any boats probably due to the early hour but we seemed to be getting slower and slower as we progressed and I needed to be at the doctors by 10.30. What should have been a 2 and a half hour trip was turning into 4 hours!

Here's where our inexperience showed once again. We were both aware that the engine wasn't handling properly but looking over the back there was a good wash and everything seemed to be Ok. However we instinctively we knew it wasn't right, we thought something was wrong with the prop but dismissed it. It took us until we were nearly back at the marina and the boat was virtually not moving to decide to moor up and look in the weed hatch.

By this time I was late for my appointment so I jumped off the boat, threw a mooring pin in, tied up and legged it over the nearest bridge for the doctors. I felt such a fraud when I turned up all hot and sweaty having obviously jogged it and had my jab amongst all those pensioners who'd arrived on mobility vehicles! I would like to pay a tribute to modern medicine that my asthma is kept under such good control that I can lead such an active life. (I mean that seriously by the way and when I do get ill I do suffer really badly with my breathing).

I got back to the boat to find P extracting a pile of string which had wrapped itself around the prop.... why didn't we stop earlier?! However it enabled us to carry on with increased confidence and we managed to get into our berth really smoothly, what a good team we are!

Several jobs were then divied up, P gets the technical ones which include 'hooking up' to shore power and reconnecting sky so he can get his sport on the telly. I get the domestic ones such as emptying the toilet. If you are considering buying a boat, you have two options for waste disposal, you can either have a 'pump out' which is a tank underneath the floor, which has quite a big capacity and which you have to pay about £10 every few months to plug into a canal side pump which evacuates it, or .... you can have a cassette which is a manual tank which you pull out from under the toilet and empty yourself into a sluice. There are arguments for and against but without going into too much scatalogical detail .... in the summer months you can smell the boats with pump outs. I would always go for a cassette, which needs changing every other day usually. The downside is that they are heavy when full. Our sluice is about 100 yards away at the top of the car park, but I see it is my weight lifting session!! I cycle a lot, so my legs are strong but my upper body had been really weak until we moved onto the boat. Now I get the chance to tone my arm muscles every day, either chopping and sawing wood or carrying the cassette. Boating is basically free gym membership!!

I will move off this distasteful subject now, but it only requires me to say that when you have been married for the decades that P and I have been, it is fine to sort this out, but bearing in mind that what goes in has to be swiiled out, I do try to persuade visitors to use the toilet block on the marina for obvious reasons!

Shortly after we got back we were treated to a lovely welcome from J the whippet who we look after for a fellow boater on the marina when she is at college. He is a great dog and we have become very attached. He bounded down the jetty to greet us and T, his owner who is a good friend of ours said he had tried to come and see us last night when we were out but she kept trying to explain to him that all he would find would be an empty jetty.

When we got back we kept asking ourselves why we hadn't gone out more often this summer. It is a joy to get out 'on the water' it is a different back garden every day. We made the excuse that we have been busy with other things, but that is no excuse! So to use a nautical quote.... here is my first quote of my blog.I intend to sign off with a litte quote every time I write from now on .......


Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Thomas Firbank from 'I bought a Mountain'  (A cracking book by the way !!!)

Al :)