Boating in the wet and the wind

9th & 10th January

With no plans to move and after a night punctuated by the noise of strong winds, we made a lazy start to the day. On the way down the towpath to the road at Wheelock, going to buy a paper, we found a tree down, almost but not quite blocking the path. It had also stopped just short of hitting the boat moored there.

When we got back to Sanity, I phoned the BW Wales and Border Counties office and reported it, having a very pleasant conversation with the woman who answered the phone. A bit later in the day it was gone, though we never spotted the blokes doing it.

Also later in the day, I was sitting working at the desk in the study bedroom when the boat started moving oddly – rocking and with odd noises from outside.

When I went out to investigate, there was a guy on the offside gunwale busy bow hauling the boat which had been moored behind us.

He apologised profusely, saying that he didn't realise there was anybody on the boat. This was perhaps a bit slow of him, since smoke was coming out of the chimney, but it seemed to be a genuine mistake.

He and his mate were moving the boat to Middlewich in this way. Apparently he'd been refitting it further up the canal when it sank – there was a small hole on the uxter plate (the bit of base plate under the counter), and the boat had slowly filled up and gone down.

He said in some surprise that they'd refloated it once already, but when they came back to it, blow me, it had sunk again. He didn't indicate whether he'd actually tried to close off the hole, saying "It's very small, only the size of a pencil".

I forbore to point out that even a small hole below the waterline, over a period of time, will let in enough water to sink the boat, steel not being famous for its buoyancy. The other sad thing is that it implies he bought the boat without a survey. It's very likely that, where there is one actual hole, there are many more potential ones, the steel having worn through over time (it was a pretty old looking boat).

The rest of the day was spent loafing, really, time being filled with internet activity, knitting, reading, and making a new ringtone for the phone.

Elanor had expressed some reservations about us using Waterloo as her personal ringtone, so I spent a bit of time in Sound Studio making a new 15 sec ringtone from the track Jose Cuervo, which Elanor likes for good reasons of her own. I did offer to use another Abba track, namely Knowing Me, Knowing You, in view of her recent break up, but I didn't happen to have it in iTunes, and it hardly seemed worthwhile buying it just for the sake of a joke in poor taste.

Today the weather looked distinctly dodgy, but the forecast was for an improvement, and I wanted to get down the rest of the locks to Middlewich – we are meeting Peter and Jan at the Salt Barge in Wincham on Saturday, and it's nice to have a day in hand for these things. I suspect that if it had been Sheila's turn to steer we wouldn't have gone, but there it was.

In the event, her scepticism was justified. It was really not a nice morning for boating, and we needed all the wet weather gear we had on. It rained fairly continuously, and from time to time it blew quite seriously as well.

We stopped on the water point to top up, and then it was the plod along the rather dismal pound that circumnavigates Sandbach without ever getting near enough to it to be useful.

Half way down Booth's Locks we crossed with an Elton Moss boat heading back to their base just above. This at least meant that all the locks would now be in our favour, which was particularly useful at Rumps. Sheila got off at the bridge well before and walked to it to get it open so that I could take Sanity straight in, despite the half gale that was by now blowing from behind me.

After that things weren't so bad, and Kings Lock was comparatively straightforward. The promised improvement in the weather was beginning to show up. Down the Middlewich Three we went, avoiding the broken down boat in the tight left hander pound between the top and middle locks. (OK, so you are broken down, but why not bow haul it up the last lock and get it out of everyone's way? You're almost certainly going to have to do that anyway.)

We stopped on the mooring beyond the Town Bridge, ate a belated lunch and then made a shopping raid on Somerfield, Bargain Booze and Rowland's the chemist.

Then we set off again, in pleasant sunshine now, and stopped briefly before Croxton Aqueduct to dispose of the old engine oil at the County Council tip there. Just across the aqueduct we finally stopped for the night. After I'd shut everything down, there was this persistent noise as of a pump or fan still running. It sounded as if the Eberspacher had tried to start itself up, and got stuck somewhere in its routine.

Sheila came and had a listen too, and we tried starting the Eberspacher in the ordinary way. This happened perfectly normally, and just as it was doing so, I realised that the manual override switch for the bilge pump was down. Sanity is such a dry boat, we never have occasion to use the bilge pump, and I just hadn't recognised the sound. A cheap disposable nappy (£2.50 for 20 from a supermarket) in the stern bilge is enough to absorb the bit of water that comes in past the stern greaser, being changed when I change the oil.

Just hope I haven't wrecked the impeller on the bilge pump running it dry for several minutes – better check it sometime, I suppose.