Quiet day, busy day

21st & 22nd October

One of the advantages of being on this mooring is that we are much less vulnerable to the effects of boats going past as we are tied at right angles to their direction of travel. The night before last, however, saw an exception to this. It was quite late but a boat charged past at such speed that we were first thrown against the side of the mooring and then forwards so that the stem post took a chip out of the concrete edge in front of it.

We weren’t able to identify the perpetrators; it was probably somebody trying to complete the Cheshire ring in a silly time scale. It must have been very uncomfortable for the boats on the towpath moorings.

Yesterday we were asked to move Sanity temporarily to a space on one of the pontoons whilst Iain Bryceland dredged out our mooring. He took about twenty tonnes of silt out of it and we can now get almost right up to the edge and certainly right forward. We’ll just have to hope that the speed merchant doesn’t come back, though we have put side fenders down now.

Apart from that, it was a quiet day of pottering about in the boat. I did a brief post on the other blog together with the original plan for Sanity Again.

Today has been very different as I had an appointment at Marple Physio for 11.45 am. We got away from Poynton at quarter to nine and were mooring opposite the facilities block just after ten. Felonious Mongoose was also there and we had time for a brief chat with Charley and Dolores before getting in some shopping.

I was very pleased with the quality of the consultation with the physio and at £37 a time it seems like a very reasonable deal. I’ve been given some exercises to do with a stretchy Dynaband to build on the pushing around I had at the clinic, and I’m due to go back there next week.

After lunch we pushed across to the sanitary station which is clearly marked “Suitable for self pump out” and did that very thing. We were able to do a thorough job and have got back to the green “tank empty” light on the gauge.

We’d thought about stopping at Deer Farm Bend for the night, but it was very busy and so we have come right back to the home mooring. In addition, since there are indeed deer at the deer farm at the moment and since one of them is a rutting stag it might have been quite noisy overnight.

Sheila left me to steer in the alternating bright sun and showers whilst she started dismantling my failed attempt at a vee fender. The side fender she has just made is now in use and is very effective as long as it’s not needed to sink. Once she’s taken the vee fender apart it can be converted into some more side fenders.

We’re planning a fairly quiet day tomorrow, although we’ll need to nip over to the water point; we could have watered at Marple but don’t like to do so at the same time as pumping out. We may also have a go at reversing into the mooring so as to blow the last of the silt away, but that depends on whether Katalina, the boat that moors on the towpath opposite us, has done her usual trick of moving through onto the deeps for the weekend.