Getting things done at Newark

9th July

It's been a day of rest, and a day to get things done. We've spent it on the pontoon at Newark, and after a good night's sleep, began by sending yet another stroppy email to Birmingham Midshires about the fact that I've not been able to access my internet saver account for over a month now. We'd thought it was settled once, when we actually got a letter of apology from a manager, but they still hadn't sent the magic "access token" needed to regain the power to operate the account.

Having launched this missile, we went to Waitrose for the second time, only to discover that they didn't open until half eight, so a little hanging about was required. We also popped into the BW office here, and bought an electricity card, so that we could hook up to the power supply post. It cost £5.08 for a 12 credit card, each credit being worth 5 kWh. So far we've used just the first credit, so that's around 42 pence, including doing a wash load, rather than run the engine for around three hours and burning between three and four litres of diesel.

It's also good for the batteries to have a long slow charge from time to time to reduce sulphation of the plates.

On our return to Sanity, we checked the email to discover, hurrah hurrah, the access token had magically arrived. It's amazing what copying your complaints to the Financial Ombudsman will do.

Off we went again, this time into town, where we visited a string of shops, Newark being fairly comprehensively provided with most of the stores you'd expect, including a Julian Graves and a Marks and Sparks.

Back to the boat for coffee, and Sheila spent some time online, closing the BM account now that we have access to it again, and opening an Egg savers account instead, Egg currently offering one of the better deals for an instant access internet account.

It came on to rain for most of the rest of the day (I think the official phrase is "risk of showers, some heavy and prolonged") so we've not done a lot else, bar read the papers and magazines, do bits and bobs on the laptop and watch a variety of boats come and go.

This included a huge, Tjalk style Dutch Barge called Howling Gale.

It's going to be a quiet evening again, then the plan is to go on upriver to maybe Gunthorpe tomorrow, and Nottingham the day after.

Relief at Newark

8th July

Definitely a quickie this time, as I'm a bit weary.

There's no doubt about it, long tidal passages are stressful for this crew, and the Trent between Torksey and Newark is well up the list. It's the concern (only slightly exaggerated) about taking a bend too sharply and running aground, in addition to the usual worries about the consequences of engine failure, this time thrown into relief by yesterday's adventure with the drive belt.

We locked down at 0830, and made an uneventful trip to Cromwell Lock, enlivened though it was by Little Shuva shuving an empty gravel pan past us just as we got to Fledborough Viaduct, and a full barge coming the other way a bit higher up. In the event, neither gave us any bother, passing without difficulty.

It took a deal longer to come back up, despite having the flood tide behind us for the first couple of hours; five and a half hours as against four going down, but once above the effective range of the tide, Sanity was working hard to stem the flow against us.

Cathy and the boys came to see us on arrival - we had to moor on the wall at first, but later moved across to the pontoon.

We've done a first trip to Waitrose (Chinese banquet for two tonight), and we'll have a leisurely shop in town tomorrow.

Oh, one last wildlife note – there were a lot of Oyster Catchers about today.

and so to Torksey

7th July

It was another good evening last night. I did a chicken tagine with cous-cous for dinner, and we sat about and nattered until eleven again.

This morning I walked into the village and shopped at the Mills newsagent and the greengrocers. Despite John's advice last night, I didn't find the Co-op. Apparently you have to go well past the chip shop and the village hall, and on round the corner to get to it.

Back at the moorings, we had a merry time winding Waimaru. The canal looked just about wide enough, but our first attempt ended with her stuck across the cut needing maybe another two foot to get round.

I reckoned that it was just that bit wider further up, so we all hauled on various ropes and moved along a bit, and sure enough, round she went.

The crew of a cruiser tied nearby were a bit mystified, and a bit anxious I think. They didn't seem to appreciate my explanation that I thought that the morning was a bit quiet and that we wanted to do something to liven it up.

Be that as it may, we said our farewells to John and Nev and set off for the routine plod to Torksey. A bit more than half way there, weird noises came from the engine. At first I thought it was something on the prop, and chucked back, but that didn't help.

Investigating under the engine boards showed the bad news; the engine alternator belt had jumped its pulleys and was rattling around. Even as I watched, the rev counter started to slow as the alternator ran down (the tacho is driven electronically from a winding on the alternator), and the warning light and siren came on to say that the start battery was no longer being charged.

I stopped the engine, and we coasted into the side. Sheila got off the bow, having first done what she could with the boat hook to clear away the rampant nettles on the bank, and took the centreline.

I got the engine boards up, and found that the belt had partly delaminated, so that it was no longer taut, and had a bit missing underneath, so it had come off the water pump pulley,which is the highest one it goes round. We had a spare, but that belt is the innermost of the three on the engine, and there was nothing for it but to take them all off.

This task was made more exciting by the fact that the engine was very hot, of course, but eventually it was done, and the new belt persuaded into place. Then there was just the fun of tensioning them all. The new belt was no problem, and the Travelpower belt is an old friend and soon co-operated, but the domestic alternator was its usual awkward self.

Meantime, it started to rain.

The last belt was finally tightened up, and the engine restarted. Sheila scrambled back on board, and took over the helm whilst I sorted tools away, tidied up and got washed. A check under the boards showed everything spinning round just as it should.

I then abandoned Sheila to her fate as it really started to rain, a torrential downpour. She was wearing a waterproof top and shorts, and got inside the back doors and just had to tough it out. On arrival at the Torksey visitor moorings, I took over the helm in the downpour, and Sheila hopped off onto the landing to take the lines.

After making all secure, we retreated below to dry off and (in Sheila's case) change shorts. At least bare skin is easier to dry than trousers, and it's just as well all this happened today, rather than somewhere on the tidal Trent tomorrow.

We're running a washload as I type, so as to give the engine some work to do and to check that all is hunky dory on the engine again.

I've been and spoken to the lockie just to cross check timings. The optimum departure for us is 0850, so we'll be in position waiting to pen down at half eight tomorrow. Newark here we come.

Farewell to the Witham

6th July

As was to be expected, we had a great evening with the Campbells on Waimaru, not getting back to Sanity before eleven. Another rather sticky night went by, and we were up and about again by half seven.

A trip to the Co-op replenished the store cupboard enough to get us to Newark, bar what we'll pick up here in Saxilby tomorrow morning. Sheila took the helm for the first ten minutes whilst I put the stores away, then I took over through Brayford Pool to the water point by the University moorings.

It's still not clear what plans there are, if any, for Brayford, beyond the existing, substantial long term moorings. There used to be some very expensive visitor moorings on the left as you enter from the Fossdyke, but they have all gone, and the proliferation of bars and clubs on that side, with no barrier whatsoever from the waterside, would make them a pretty iffy choice for an overnight stop anyway.

We'd been much better off on the less salubrious seeming wall between the narrow section after the Glory Hole and Stamp End.

Whilst we were waiting for the tank to fill, I rang the lockie at Torksey, who confirmed that Wednesday will be a morning tide, and advised that our best time to leave for Cromwell will be nine am. This was a relief, as John Campbell had told us that when they came off the Trent at the weekend, there had been a queue of boats waiting to go up to Cromwell, held back by lack of water in the river. We've moved from neaps to springs, so I guess that's made the difference – I don't suppose that there's a lot of fresh coming down, despite the recent thunder storms around the place.

With the water tank full, we went on to Burton Waters and had a pump out and filled up with diesel. This pump out was even better than the one we had the other week, with the air fairly howling into the breather by the end. As a result, the green "empty" light actually came on on the gauge for the first time in months, so it must have cleared a lot of sludge off the bottom.

Waimaru was behind us by around twenty minutes when we went into the marina, but was of course long gone by the time we came out. We got to Saxilby to find that they'd been able to tie with another space immediately behind, which is handy for entertaining them tonight.

For the next few days, I'm going to carry on with this shorter daily post, and then might go back to the pattern of longer posts every other day, though I'd be interested in any preferences folk might want to express via the comments section.

A day at the Airshow, and then on to Lincoln

4th & 5th July

We left the boat on Friday afternoon, after charging the batteries as full as we could in the time available. After a very pleasant evening at Boothby Graffoe, in the company of Cathy and Cathy's mother and stepfather, Jane and Tom, we had a decent night's sleep, it having cooled down a shade.

In the morning, Tom and I went to Waddington Airshow, and had a real boy's day looking at the static displays and then watching the flying from the families enclosure. (Graeme is is out of the country at the moment.)

I had the chance of a brief chat with one of Graeme's colleagues, who had flown with him just a few days before. Meanwhile, the women and kids visited a playground and Sheila got some shopping in. It's not often that we have such a gender stereotyped day, but it's fun once in a while.

At the end of the afternoon, Jane and Tom kindly ran us back to Bardney Bridge, and we walked back to the boat above Bardney Lock. I'd been able to collect the spare part for the chair, which had been delivered to Graeme and Cathy's, but refrained from doing anything with it until today. In fact, we rather collapsed in the sunshine on the pontoon, drinking cold beers and eating a tuna salad.

Wildlife stories:

During Friday afternoon, as I was showering, a swallow flew in at the side hatch, round the saloon and out of the hatch again. I was left wondering what the strange noises were, but it turned out to be Sheila expressing her surprise at this event.

During yesterday afternoon, a pike took a fish just below the side hatch. There was a great swirling of water, followed by a lot of scales and some blood drifting about. Some junior pike were seen swimming around, so presumably they'd been getting a hunting lesson from the adult.

Walking back along the path to the boat, a guy sitting on the Bardney Bridge pontoon exclaimed at the sight of the seat part under my arm, which was comprehensively wrapped in bubble wrap and looked very white in the sunlight.

"I thought you were carrying a swan!" he said.

Today we had a fairly relaxed start, and Sheila boated up to Stamp End Lock. I finally got to unpack the chair bit, which is, happily, the right one. The only problem I have is that the swivel is attached to the underside of the bit I'm replacing with a tapered interference fit, and after five years of holding my weight up, it's very interfered with indeed.

I've tried some strategies involving propping it on two big hammers and hitting it with a smaller one, but it's not going to give in easily. What I really need is a small hub puller, to press the taper out of the holes, but that may well have to wait until we're up at Poynton, unless anyone at the IWA National happens to have one with them.

(Note to Bungle, Welsh Phil or other suitable wrgies likely to be at Redhill: the taper's around 20 mm dia, and is stuck through a bracket 65 mm by 50 mm, so I need a puller to fit those dimensions ;-} )

Following some email and phone calls, Waimaru has rendezvoused with us here in Lincoln, so we'll be eating with them tonight, and hearing their tales of travel to Liverpool and over the Leeds and Liverpool to the waters of Yorkshire.

I've already repaired their bow line with a short splice, after it was burnt through by some kids in Wigan overnight.

and so to Bardney

3 July

After another hot and sticky night, despite leaving the slide partly open as well as the Houdini, we were up and about early, it being a relief to get up and wash in cool water.

Not long after half seven, we set off to carry on up river. I was steering, as Sheila reckoned I'd had only a short spell yesterday. The time passed pleasantly enough, though again there wasn't a lot in the way of novel wild life to look at, bar an owl sat on a post as we approached Bardney Bridge.

It wasn't a Barn Owl this time, and it was unlikely to be a Tawny, as they are most reluctant to come out in daylight, so we reckon it must have been a Little Owl again. You can tell we're getting blasé about our birding, when parades of Great Crested Grebe with young in tow just lead to casual, 'Oh look, there's another one' type remarks.

A minor source of anxiety was the non-performance of the email connection. Sheila had been trying to send an email about our mooring at the IWA National. Elanor has got our mooring pack for us, but it doesn't confirm that we've got one of the worker's moorings, and we just need the reassurance that we're not going to spend 3 weeks having to come back to the boat to run the engine every day.

So, of course, it wouldn't send. By this time, I'd been steering for an hour, so the excuse to hand over and see what was going on was welcome. The connection seemed fine, it was just the Dataflame access that didn't seem to be working. In the end I abandoned it, deciding to wait until we were tied up before exploring it further or ringing the support line.

Working up Bardney Lock was no trouble – we're really getting used to its little ways – and we were soon watering whilst a washload finished. A check on the email showed that it had come back, so whatever the problem was, Dataflame must have got onto it. I continue to be impressed with them as an ISP.

We've tied on the long visitor mooring pontoon above Bardney Lock. There's not a lot here, though it's unusual in that it has card operated shoreline posts. Unfortunately, our very ancient BW card wasn't recognised by the reader. I'm not surprised particularly, it's one we've had for about three years, and they've changed the rules about card use at least twice in that time.

Tomorrow, I'm off to the Waddington Airshow, then on Sunday we'll set off again for Lincoln, Newark, Nottingham and Burton on Trent, a significant journey in the terms of the continuous cruising guidelines, I hope.

A hot run to Kirkstead Bridge

2 July

We had a quiet night last night, as expected, once the aircraft had stopped zooming in and out of Coningsby. I'd loaded some new books onto the Sony Reader, but otherwise it was a "do not much in the heat" sort of evening.

This morning, I was awake before Sheila, after we'd both had another heat disturbed night, and started trying to read one of the new books. The reader promptly froze, and only restarted after a bit of sulking. I had the same response with one of the other books, so left it until I could seek advice on the MobileRead forum.

I took an hour to run up to Kirkstead Bridge, though the wildlife watching wasn't a patch on yesterday's. We tied here around half ten, and after a restorative glass of squash, I walked the mile into Woodhall Spa for a paper and a loaf of bread.

The main entertainment on the way was the sight of a sign advertising ferrets for sale "for work or pet".

Back at the pontoon, things were enlivened by the arrival of the little steam launch Pod's Puffer. We had a good natter to her crew, who then went off to rendezvous with siblings, having first explained the difference between Tattershall and Kirkstead to them over the phone.

However did we manage before the advent of the mobile phone?

They were not long back from the pub when Copper Dragon turned up again, so we had another good natter with them.

It's still very hot, so not much more to report: the Reader is functioning again, after the deletion of the offending books, but I've not got to the bottom of the problem yet.