Firstly, a huge thanks and recommendation from us
for River Canal Rescue www.rivercanalrescue.co.uk
and Anderton Marina www.andertonmarina.com
both of whom have been extremely efficient and helpful to us over this past
week.
The drama started last Saturday, luckily, just
after our last son and his girlfriends holiday had finished with us and they
were on their way back home. (I’m not really all that hot on grammar, but the
way I’ve written girlfriend(s) makes it sound like he came with a couple of
them, but no, he isn’t that lucky, he’s just got the one. Here’s a picture of
them and you’ll also see Binks in his safe place whilst on the boat.
The plan was to have a few quiet days after a busy couple of weeks
when KLONK CLANG (sounds like something out of Bat Man doesn’t it.) WALLOP and
that was us, we weren’t going anywhere other than with the current. Luckily we
were still up on the Trent and Mersey Canal
I thought a running repair would do so popped up
to the Chandler's for some parts, but a few hours later it became apparent that
fixing it wasn’t going to happen by my fair hand and we subsequently
found out that we’d managed to bend the prop shaft somehow. We contacted River
Canal Rescue on the Sunday morning and they were with us a few hours later as
the chaps were already on a call. It wasn’t easily fixable, as I’d thought, so
they arranged with Anderton Marina to come down to have a look, price up the
work that then saw us get into their dry dock.
I haven’t seen many dry docks, so the one at
Anderton Marina may not necessarily be unique, but I think it is an excellent
idea nonetheless. For want of another word, it’s like a skip with an entrance
at one end. Once you’re in they wind up a door, pump out the water, the skip (dry
dock) floats and the boat inside is out of the water – SIMPLES
Dry dock after >
< The door at the front
Ready and waiting >
Whilst we weren’t planning to black the boat until
next year, we thought we may just as well get it done whilst it was out of the
water so at least that’s a job done and sort of cheaper as well as we’ve put
the cost of the dry dock against the repair of the prop shaft anyway.
After >
These last eight days or so has also given our
solar panels a good test as we haven’t been able to run the engine and haven’t
bothered hooking up to a shoreline either so we’ve been living off the sun
alone. Not bad when we’ve been pretty much out of any direct sunlight (when there
has been sunlight !) and what there has been has been through a Perspex roof.
Should, with should being the operative word, be
down on the River Weaver in a few days time and plan to spend the next two or
three weeks down there so stay tuned and we’ll let you know how we get on.
And so in signing off,
Day 178 in the Badger Sett Narrowboat - 311 miles
and 102 locks further on from when we started.
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