Seeing the New Year in

31st December 2008 & 1st January 2009

We woke yesterday morning to find that, as we'd feared, the cut had frozen quite hard overnight. It was around one eighth of an inch thick near the boat, but rather thicker and harder in the centre of the channel. I took care to start the engine first thing, and to use it to clear the ice away from the immediate vicinity of the hull by running in gear, first ahead for a couple of minutes, so that the prop was free of ice, then astern for a while longer, blowing the broken ice away from the side.

I don't normally approve of running in gear – the wash is not good for the side of the canal - but I make an exception when iced in, as it greatly reduces the grinding of ice against the boat when another passes. It is important, firstly to take care when running astern – if anything or anyone were to fall in immediately behind the boat, it or they would be swiftly drawn into the prop with catastrophic consequences – and not to go on longer than absolutely necessary to achieve the effect.

There was in fact a fair bit of traffic to and fro during the morning, and by lunchtime the ice was well broken. We'd made a trip into the village to buy meat from the butchers, mince and a fore rib of beef for today, and to get top up supplies from the Co-op.

A check on the Met Office site showed that if anything, the weather was due to get colder over the New Year period. With the toilet tank approaching full, and the boatyards not open until Friday, what to do was the question. We pondered this over lunch, and in the end decided to boat down into Burton, stopping at the Morrison's mooring overnight. We figured that a mooring further into the centre of town might well be quite noisy on New Year's Eve. In addition, there's not much casual parking at Shobnall, and Elanor was due to join us for the night.

With a sense of relief at having a plan to follow, we set off, first leaving a voice mail message for Elanor to keep her up to date. In the event, it all worked out very well. We passed a couple of boats coming the other way, who reassured us that the cut was presently ice free all the way in, and three hours later found a space at the Morrison's mooring without difficulty.

Elanor duly turned up at five, and we had a merry night of it, scoffing home made lasagne and consuming various beverages. It was two o'clock by the time we were in bed, which is really seriously late for us these days.

As may be imagined, we had a quiet start today, but there were no reports of after effects of the night's carousing. We've got quite a good internet connection here at the moment, so I started cleaning up the way some of my earlier posts are labelled. When I first began, I used to label posts rather haphazardly, but these days I use the labels to indicate our location at the end of each day. I've set the layout to show these labels at the end of every post, and I'm gradually going back to the early ones to bring them into line.

By mid morning we'd all had breakfast, and agreed to go over to Elanor's place to do some reorganising of her furniture, and to see if a gas fire in her lounge was in functioning condition.

This programme was achieved successfully; the gas fire, which had been screened by some other stuff until now, on being cleaned and examined looked absolutely fine, and when lit burnt well with no sign of problems either with its air supply or its flue. Because her current double glazing was fitted after the house was built, and the gas fire is original, I've advised Elanor to keep one of the windows on its ventilation setting when using the fire, and to get and fit a carbon monoxide alarm in the lounge just to be on the safe side. You can't be too careful when living alone.

Mid afternoon we all came back to the boat to run the engine and so on. We'll have the rib of beef tonight, and a rather earlier bed time, I expect. Tomorrow, we'll make a trip to Morrison's, then take Sanity down to Shobnall for pump out, diesel and to buy a replacement water pump.