More snow

3rd & 4th February

I must start this post with another word of thanks to all those who have posted encouraging comments in the last few days; as always, it's a big help to know that not only are there folks out there reading my witterings on, but that they actually enjoy them! Many thanks to all of you for your support during a time of waiting and suspense for me.

I shall be so glad when Alexander has arrived safely and Sheila is back with me.

Now, if everyone's wiped their eyes and put their hankies away, I'll get on:

Like everyone else in the country, I woke yesterday to find that a lot more snow had fallen, justifying a very lazy start. The wind had dropped a good deal, which meant that the boat was a much warmer than before. Up until now, it's been a battle between the Ecofan blowing hot air from the Squirrel down the boat from the bow, and the easterly wind blowing cold air in from the stern. Now, the warmth was able to spread much further, making the whole boat feel better.

I took a few photos of Sanity in the snow, and of Tixall Gatehouse across the white fields, before taking my usual walk to Great Haywood for daily supplies. The bridge over the junction is getting quite tricky to negotiate, the cobbles of the bridge deck being covered with half melted snow and ice. The pavements in the village were a bit of a challenge yesterday too, though much better today.

On my way back, I found the Gailey shared boat Alexandrine tied on the water point. Her crew were pleased to discover that the tap hadn't frozen, but then found that the cap on the water filler in the well deck had. They'd given up struggling with it and were scratching their heads when I passed.

"Try pouring hot water on it" quoth I.

"Oh, that's a good idea, thanks."

You can tell we haven't had much in the way of cold winters recently. I wonder what they'd have said if I suggested the traditional boater's solution to a frozen pipe: dip a rag in the fuel tank, tie it round the pipe and set fire to it.

All those Gailey share boats have names that feature either a twelve or an eight, depending on how many shares they have (Twelfth of Never, Pieces of Eight and so on). I looked up alexandrine today, and find that it's the name for an iambic hexameter, that is a line of poetry twelve syllables long, comprising six iambic feet. (I.e. pom-POM, pom-POM, pom-POM, pom-POM, pom-POM, pom-POM.)

There you go, today's bit of trivia for you.

Back at the boat, I did the other tricky bit of work for the day, namely getting a bag of coal off the roof to refill the box in the well deck. Fortunately, most of the snow and ice had gone from the roof, except the big lumps in amongst the folds of the tarp, so it wasn't as bad as I'd feared, but I was glad to have it done without taking a dive into the cut off the roof.

I ran the engine and a washload in the second half of the morning, and spent a chunk of the afternoon watching the first half of The Two Towers. The film is so long it's split over two discs, which just breaks it up nicely. I've just finished watching the second half, leaving The Return of the King for tomorrow and Friday.

I'm hoping that Saturday will be taken up with other things, but not counting on it; there's no news from Lincoln at the moment.

It was milder overnight last night, and the snow has started to thaw off the towpath, but the bridge was as tricky as ever. There's more snow forecast for tomorrow, so when I got back from the village today, I dipped the diesel tank to make sure that's there's enough to get through to the weekend.

The fuel consumption figures built into Sheila's spreadsheet are obviously quite pessimistic. It was predicting 75 litres left in the tank, but in practice it's still more than half full. I've tinkered with the numbers in the spreadsheet to bring it more into line.

It's a tricky business, this measuring consumption. I do it by trying always to have the tank filled to the same point each time, that is, just to the bottom of the filler tube which projects down into the tank, but a few millimetres of difference in level represents quite a lot of fuel, as the tank is quite wide, being the whole of the back end of the stern. In addition, I suspect that boat yard pumps are quite variable in their mensuration, as I've commented before.

They are usually ex-filling station pumps, and I don't suppose that Trading Standards come round to check them very often. Be that as it may, it looks as if I'm presently getting about 1.1 litres per hour out of the Beta 43, and about 0.6 lph out of the Eberspacher.

Moore2Life came by today: Annie was walking along the towpath, and knocked on the boat to ask for news from Lincoln, which was kind. They've been to Milford and back, and hope to be able to get away altogether by the end of the week, assuming Chas's leg is fully recovered (good luck, mate)

I think that's about it for now: hopefully I'll have some news next time, but as I say, who can tell?