Two great days

8th & 9th October

Yesterday didn't get off to a brilliant start; it was cold enough first thing for me to decide to give the newly serviced Eberspacher a blast whilst I made the early morning tea. By the time I came back to bed with two mugs of steaming Red Bush, it had cut out, apparently disconnected from the power supply.

We had too much to do to start faffing around with it there and then, so we got on without it. Apart from that, it was a stunning, absolutely beautiful morning, so we set off for Alrewas in a generally good mood.

We stopped at Barton Turn for water, then chugged steadily on. Not many boats (in fact, none) were coming towards us, so we wondered a bit whether the river section between Wychnor and Alrewas would be passable. If it wasn't we'd just have to moor at Wychnor, and I'd walk into Alrewas for my hearing test at the surgery.

In the event, the warning signs said "Proceed with caution", and the level gauge at Wychnor Lock was well in the green. Another boat was actually coming down the lock, and its steerer told us that he'd had no problems.

There was a good bit of water flowing past the moorings at Wychnor, running out of the canal through the adjustable side weirs at the end of them. The moored boats appeared to be doing about 2 knots through the water. A family of swans, two adults and five juveniles, were hanging about in the section past the moorings, and chose to take off from behind us, overflying the boat in an alarming manner.

When we got to the river section proper, the water was fairly boiling over the long weir, with a massive 'stopper' piling up below it. It was an awesome sight, especially for Sheila, who was steering. She wound the engine up to 1400 rpm, the upper limit of our normal cruising range, and Sanity forged powerfully on into the flow. Sheila reports feeling quite some draw towards the weir, and she had to keep the power on as she turned across the flow to leave the main river and head for Alrewas Lock.

There was a boat coming down the lock, and Sheila was able to hold Sanity more or less stationary as we waited for them to clear. As always in these situations, they seemed to be taking a long time to get going, but I don't suppose they were any slower than most boaters.

Once the way ahead was clear, Sheila slotted Sanity into the lock, and I hopped off as the bow entered, to nip up the side and shut the bottom gates. I noticed as I was waiting to do this that the river gauge below the lock was definitely in the yellow band, which felt much more appropriate to the conditions we'd just experienced. I would hesitate to try the river section when the gauge at Wychnor is in the yellow.

We found a mooring just through the bridge from the water point, and settled down to eat lunch. Afterwards, I investigated the Eberspacher. Disconnecting and reconnecting the power supply seemed to bring it back to life, but an attempt to restart didn't produce any action, though it was drawing plenty of current. I disconnected and reconnected again, and this time it fired up OK, though it took two cycles to do so, and kicked out a lot of white smoke in the process.

The water pump sounded a bit uncertain for a while, and then settled down, so I left it to run for half an hour (with all the doors open in the boat – we didn't really need the extra heat). I haven't tried it again since, but the worry must be that the water pump is thinking of packing up, and we've already been told that that's not an economic repair.

Looks like we could be replacing the central heating next year, and I don't think we'll go back to Eberspacher.

Late in the afternoon, I went down to the surgery for my hearing test. This didn't in fact take place as the batteries in the audiometer had died, and they didn't have replacements in stock. I've had to make a fresh appointment for ten days time; it's a good job we're not in a rush to get away from here this year.

Salt was rubbed in this particular wound by the offspring. Both Elanor and Graeme, on being told of the problem with the machine said (in separate phone calls) "I expect they just told you the batteries were flat to make up for you not being able to hear the tones".

Thank you, kids, and I'll spend the rest of your inheritance just as soon as I can extract it from my account with Icesave.

If it sounds like we had a terrible day yesterday, that's misleading. The weather was so fine, it was hard to feel downhearted about anything.

Today was even better. The weather continued great, and Graeme, Cathy and Daniel visited us. They'd been staying with Cathy's father and stepmother in Nottingham, so it wasn't much further to come and see us in the same trip.

Daniel is just wonderful, of course, being my first grandson, and it was good to see his parents too. He had a great time feeding the ducks (what is it about feeding ducks?) although he wasn't impressed by being pecked by an overenthusiastic swan that joined the party with its siblings.

After lunch, Will Chapman rang to say that the parcel we'd ordered from Lakeland on Tuesday had arrived, so I went down to his house for a natter and to pick it up.

Lakeland are well ahead of Waterstone's in this; the Sony Reader I ordered at the same time is still listed as "Awaiting picking in the warehouse".

Tomorrow we go to Huddlesford, in preparation for the SOW Strategy Meeting at Lichfield Cruising Club on Saturday. I'll try and do my regular blog post after the meeting, but it may be a brief, holding one, depending how drained I feel by all the discussions.