Pottering to Macclesfield

8th & 9th November

There’s not a lot to tell today, as we’ve been pottering and recovering from the excitements of last week. The main thing to report is that we have tackled our least favourite boat maintenance job, namely resealing the join between the walls of the shower cubicle and the tray.

It’s only the second time we’ve had to do it in six years, so I suppose we shouldn’t complain too much. There wasn’t a major problem, but it had some mould growth and was starting to peel back off the tiling in one corner. If we’d left it there would be a risk of water penetration through the relevant bulk head.

The low frequency with which the job has to be done is part of the problem of course. Wielding a sealant gun is something that needs practice if you’re to get the professional effect of getting it right in a single pass, and once every three years is just not enough. Having said that, it went much better this time, partly because we had learned from experience and partly because the sealant we’d bought this time was much more pleasant to use.

(I should also pass on Elanor’s comment, based on her years of WRG experience: “You should have stuck two bits of scrap wood together at an angle, and practised on that until you were confident.”)

The answer seems to be (at least to us) to have a little bowl of water and a supply of latex gloves to hand (sorry) so that as each line of sealant is completed, it’s possible to slip on a glove, dip a finger in the water and smooth it off.

It means we’ve gone without showers for the last two days, but it’s worth it.

Apart from that some firewood has been sawn, bits and pieces have been done on the internet and so forth.

Today we wanted to go to Macclesfield to collect my new specs, so straight after breakfast we pulled out of the mooring and went to the water point. I nipped into the Braidbar yard and collected a couple of pieces of post from Peter. I also agreed the time for our meeting with him, first thing Wednesday morning, to check over the plans for Sanity Again so that the first fix wiring can go in once the spray foaming is done.

It was a brilliant morning, the best sort of winter’s day, cold but not windy, with a pale blue sky and the largely leafless trees standing out against it. The cut has rather filled up with leaf again, so it was a slowish run, but by half twelve we were moored on Gurnett Aqueduct.

We had a successful trip into Macclesfield; my spectacles are exactly what I wanted, and I’ve adjusted to wearing the new varifocals without difficulty. We also popped into Julian Graves to replenish our stocks of dried fruit and the like, and by half three were back on the boat preparing a cup of tea.

Tomorrow, we’ll amble back to Poynton via Tesco, and then some more bits and pieces on the boat will be done I have no doubt. In particular, I want to tackle the fearsome tangle of cables all over the desk, where I just connected up the Mac Mini to make sure it all worked and then never got round to redoing it tidily.