Final days at Braidbar before setting off again

Wednesday 7 March

The day started with Reg the joiner putting the roof back together - you really can't tell it was ever in bits, and the aerial works a treat. I spent some time working on IT stuff for the Brycelands - getting your head round someone else's web authoring is interesting, to say the least. Sheila settled down to some serious crocheting - she's making all the porthole doilies and shelf edging for Boat 100, the Brycelands' own which is going to be their showboat at Crick.

Not a lot else to report for that day.

Thursday 8 March

Another morning wrestling with IT, this time with a laptop with very odd behaviours and some undoubted viruses. It became apparent that it was beyond my limited grasp of Windows (I'm a Mac man really), and also that there might be a hardware fault linked to it having been dropped, so after a couple of hours gave up and composed an email to the hardware supplier.

After lunch decided on a complete change of challenge and did a major engine service - the one due at 4000 hours, a little premature, but it seemed a good idea to do it before getting into the cruising season, and also to do it whilst in the yard with access to much wise advice and experience. All went well, and the sense of my strategy was confirmed when I couldn't get the drive belt to the domestic alternator tight enough. The answer turned out to be a crowbar to lever the beast out enough.

Friday 9 March

I'd planned to spend the morning having a final go at the IT bit - the main task now was to deal with the high levels of spam Braidbar are getting through the website address, and then we thought we'd borrow the car to go shopping. A little further thought brought the conclusion that shopping first was better, so we did a good round trip to Macclesfield (filled prescription, bought a new camera (YES!) and went to Julian Graves for packs of dried pulses and the like), to the Tesco at Handforth Dean (groceries for ourselves and the Brycelands) and finally to Lakeland the kitchenware place for anti-fungus stuff for us and a baby vacuum cleaner for Braidbar (to go on the hireboat).

Then after lunch the IT was duly beaten into submission in time to pull out of the yard at the end of the afternoon. Tomorrow we're off out of it, though only down to Lyme View, as we're meeting Sheila's brother and sister-in-law at the pub there, an excellent establishment called the Miner's Arms.