Ice Breaker Sanity

8th & 9th January

The night before last was milder, but still quite cold. In the morning, we saw that the ice cover on the canal had not thawed off as much as we'd hoped. After a lazy start, we had to face a dilemma – to go or not to go? The forecast indicated that last night would be colder again, and tonight (Friday) back to seriously sub-zero temperatures.

This implied that staying where we were would mean no move until Sunday at the earliest, when it is scheduled to be much milder, but windier. By then, the water tank would be well down, and we could face the same boating conditions but now with added wind.

With the decisiveness for which we are noted, we resolved to wait until after coffee. I poddled off to the village to get supplies, noting as I did so that the towpath was still quite treacherous. On my return, we wandered up above Bagnall Lock, where we could see that there was water on top of the ice, suggesting that it was softening (to save Sheila adding a comment, I'll supply it for her here: "Not to me it didn't").

We had an early lunch, and decided to go. The towpath was much better, and the thought of running out of water was dominant. It transpired that the ice was much thicker than it appeared, even where it was water covered (Sheila: "Told you so").

In fact, I can't recall when I last boated in such tough conditions, ice-wise. Leaving Bagnall Lock, where ice had washed and blown down the long pound from Common and then piled up, Sanity's bow was actually rising onto the ice before crashing down through it. It's not good for the blacking, but at least the Tim Tyler Josher style bow does a great job of cutting through the ice.

On arrival at Fradley, we found that a bit of blacking had been removed, especially from the rubbing strakes on the swell of the bow, where Sanity had been shouldering the ice aside.

We watered, ran a wash load and pushed across to the visitor moorings (another interesting exercise when pushing ice across with you). Settling down for the afternoon, we were disappointed to find that the internet connection was stubbornly GPRS rather than 3G, but apart from that there was the relief of being securely within reach of a water supply again.

For some reason the local ducks proceeded to quack on and off all night, (they can't be getting amorous already, can they?) but apart from that we were able to get a decent night's sleep.

Taking our time to get up this morning, we found that Sod had struck again. Having gone through all the hassle of moving yesterday, it had, contrary to forecast, continued to thaw overnight. We could have come up today with very little trouble indeed.

The result was a fair bit of boat movement during the day, such that we are actually on our own on these normally busy moorings tonight. It does look as if it's going to freeze again, so we will have an excuse to stay put tomorrow. Elanor is coming over to give us a lift to the supermarket, so we can stock up before setting off for some proper boating again.

The other example of Sod's Law this afternoon came when I got all organised to replace the accumulator in the water system. Just before taking the old one off, I checked its pressure to make sure that there was at least some, so that it would be empty of water. It hadn't lost any pressure since I changed the pump last week.

Following Napier's First Law of Maintenance (Not broke = Don't fix), I've left it in place. At least we now have a spare for when age finally gets to the existing fitting.

Sheila's taken advantage of the dry weather to sort out all the wood on the roof, so we are now set up for a while with fuel, and we are both possessed of a sense of achievement.