It's all very exciting

23rd & 24th March

I’m afraid these blog posts are going to be a bit erratic for the next week or so. I will do my level best to post regularly on the same schedule that I’ve been using this year, but the price will probably be a rather disjointed account each time.

This is because we are going to be in a period of disruption as we prepare to move aboard Sanity Again and so it is quite hard to stick with a coherent account of each day. I will find it much easier just to mention the highlights of life as we go along.

One striking thing I must record is the burgeoning evidence of Spring. On our walks down to the village we have started seeing some very young lambs; the farmers here schedule their lambing for quite late in the year and must be very glad they did so this year.

We’ve also started hearing owls and woodpeckers all over the place; during the day the twanged ruler noise of the woodpeckers is accompanied by the plaintive whistle of a little owl. In the evening, there is at least one pair of tawny owls setting up home in the woods.

Yesterday, we spent a lot of time on the other side of the canal on the hire boat mooring. We had taken Sanity over there to get Peter to quote for some refurbishments, but he was more than usually distracted by an emergency in the workshop. One of the big saws had developed a problem and he spent a fair bit of time on the phone chasing down parts for it.

We put the time to good use by baking some ciabattas for lunch, nattering to all and sundry and doing an unscheduled show through.

When we did get to see Peter, he confirmed that we should be able to move onto Sanity Again today week, and this means that we will be doing her shakedown cruise over Easter weekend. The plan then is to leave her in the yard for snagging whilst we go and see Graeme, Cathy and the grandkids, but we are still negotiating about that.

Then we shall move Sanity and Sanity Again firstly to Alrewas for medical and dental checkups (for us, not the boats, obviously) and then to Crick so that Sanity can be left in the ABNB Marina for some lucky person to see her and buy her.

Today, we walked down to Poynton to shop for fresh goods and came back on the bus. We stopped to natter to Peter, and Barry on The Shouting End; Peter was supervising a workman changing the water meter on the supply to the BW waterpoint, the meter being on Braidbar’s land.

After lunch, we popped back to the yard and Peter gave us an important document, namely the Declaration of Conformity under the EU Recreational Craft Directive which allows us to apply for a BW licence for Sanity Again.

We’ve spent the rest of the time starting the big sort out in the study; all the filing has to be gone through, out of date documents weeded out, and the rest split into those which will be left on Sanity and those which we will take with us to Sanity Again.