Ice breaking and admiring a new boat

14th & 15th December

We woke to an icy morning – the frost was thick enough to make getting on and off the boat tricky, especially getting up on the bow to let the line go.

We backed onto the water point, still with the shell tied outside us, and started filling up. Meanwhile, Peter and Jack moved Nocturne out onto the shop mooring, then collected the shell from us and started poling it into the yard. There was barely enough clearance under the bridge to get the bow under, and then the stern stuck – without ballast or the engine in the stern floats slightly higher than the bow end of the cabin.

Numbers of staff had to be transferred onto the shell from the bridge to lower her in the water enough to get in. Nocturne was then moved back into the centre of the yard.

We then set off in Sanity to go to High Lane – the plan was to overnight there, and then wait for Peter and Gill Harper to come along in the morning, giving Cala her first cruise. There was a fair bit of ice on the cut still – I reckoned not enough to imperil the blacking, but Sheila was less convinced. We made it to High Lane and moored near Mata Hari and Penny Peace.

Inspection of the bow showed that I had (for once) been right – there was no sign of scratching to the blacking. It was apparent, though, that another cold night would cause more of a problem for our proposed cruise to Bugsworth this weekend.

Just as I finished the catch up blog entry, and we started to get lunch ready, Mr Hooper on Anne came through the bridge 'ole ahead of us. Since we were getting low on fuel, we flagged him down and bought another 10 bags of PureHeat. The price has gone up as he warned us it would when we last bought from him on Bonfire Night weekend – it's now £7.60 for a 25 kg bag, up 60 pence in less than two months.

Later in the day I was gratified to see that the Granny Buttons blog had referred to my hints in the post about passing the BSC – thanks Andrew.

Today we woke to find that the cut was just starting to freeze over. By the time we'd had breakfast it was getting thicker, such that the idea of boating through it for any distance did not appeal. Yesterday I'd booked a table for Sunday lunch at the Navigation at Bugsworth, for ourselves and Peter and Jan. Rather than cancel it, Sheila rang her brother and arranged that they will pick us up from here tomorrow. It's less than 15 minutes by car from High Lane to Bugsworth, though about three and a half hours by boat, even without ice.

I then spoke to Peter Harper on Cala. They were still in the yard, so we walked back to Poynton to see them. We had a pleasant session admiring the new boat (which is very nearly finished), drinking tea and generally nattering about Braidbars, other boats and life on the cut.

Back at Sanity we had a belated lunch and a quiet afternoon. I started the engine to charge the batteries, and found with a weary sigh that once again the Victron is not charging as enthusiastically as it ought. We know the TravelPower is OK, as we've just had it expensively fixed, and the Victron charges fine from a shoreline, so there must be something in the interaction between the two.

For the moment I went back to charging from the 90 amp DC alternator, but it looks like we need some seriously expert advice about what is going on.

There's always something when boating.