Catching up

4th to 7th November

The excitement of taking delivery of the shell has prevented me from doing a full post over here for a few days, so what follows are the highlights by way of a catch up.

For several nights, we’ve been puzzled by a curious harsh noise, could be mammalian, could be avian, usually heard during the night. The other evening we heard it much earlier and concluded that it must be a fox. Some research on the net found a site dedicated to fox noises, and we finally decided that it was the territorial bark of a dog fox. It may have been confused and alarmed by the fireworks going off all round, but being a fox I don’t suppose it took long for it to come to terms with it.

As part of our pre-tow preparations on Thursday, we filled the water tank and then went on to wind and return to the shop mooring for diesel, pump out and a gas cylinder. Peter Mason must have observed us on the water point because Sheila took a call from him as we went down to wind. He wanted us to take a spare shaft to High Lane with us for poling the shell out of the arm. Sheila was able to reassure him that we would be back and that we had already thought that he would want us to do that.

We duly filled, emptied and replaced that which needed filling, emptying and replacing and Matt from the yard popped a shaft on our roof. It pains me to say it once again but the Trading Post is really not very good value and it’s not surprising that the two coal boats (one of which also does pump out and diesel) find such ready customers within sight of the yard. It particularly irks me to pay £15 for a pump out, without Elsan fluid, that has a very sketchy rinse out.

We had the usual hanging about to do at High Lane at the North Cheshire Cruising Club. People there are very friendly, and several commented that they read this blog, which is gratifying as always. We seriously intend to join the NCCC, though the website is a bit vague about the membership categories and costs. An email to the Membership Secretary is clearly indicated.

The tow was accomplished without drama, which is the way we like it, but to the accompaniment of what the forecast called “showers, some heavy and prolonged” but what anyone else not resident in the monsoon zone would call fairly relentless, torrential rain. We had taken the precaution of putting on all our wet weather gear and only got a bit chilled towards the end of the day. (My right foot is an exception to this, but I’ll return to that in a moment.) Peter Mason and Graham Johnson were not so well attired and must have got very damp indeed.

As I’ve said elsewhere, and indeed the pictures show it, the shell is everything we could wish for and Tim Tyler is to be congratulated on one of his best jobs.

My right foot got wet because my Hi-tec boots bought a year ago in Stone have started leaking through the right heel. The heel is hollow like a fancy pair of trainers instead of being a decently solid bit of rubber, and the base has split. I admit our footwear has a hard time, but it does seem difficult to find boots that will last more than twelve months.

Yesterday, we were on our way to the recycling site when we stopped to chat to Peter and to the hirers of Skye who were waiting on the water point to return her. We heard two interesting stories as a result.

The first is the good news that Peter continues to receive a lot of enquiries about new boats. His order book is now such that the next build slot is in 2011.

The other was a humorous account from the hirers of trying to take Hatherton, the Ownerships boat in which they have a share, through the locks on the Huddersfield Broad. Technically those locks are 58’ long and since Ownerships boats are 58’ 6” it should have been easy to take her through on the diagonal. Hatherton must be over length, since she refused to fit into the lock. Her crew became aware of numbers of office workers in the nearby buildings observing their struggles. They obviously make a habit of doing this since after a while they held up signs which said “try going through backwards”.

Unfortunately, although this strategy worked, the thought of having to do it at each subsequent lock was so discouraging that they abandoned the trip and went somewhere else.

The rest of yesterday was taken up with photographing the shell (and stroking it a bit) and then sorting and uploading the pictures to Flickr and writing the covering blog post.

Today has been another day for relaxation although the weather has been much better. I’ve made a pot of chicken and celery soup, and otherwise we’ve been doing this and that in the boat.

It’ll be much the same tomorrow, then on Monday we are going down to Macclesfield again to collect my new spectacles.