Back on line at Eynsham

It’s been a busy couple of days, including getting our first battle scar on Sanity Again, and returning Sally to Elanor.

We’d been pleasantly surprised to find how well Sanity Again coped with the hairpin bends at the top of the Thames, and as I steered round the worst of them below Buscot Lock I was congratulating myself, prematurely, as it turned out. (Isn’t it always the way?)

We were rounding the final really tight one, the last to have a marker buoy on the end of the spit out from the inside bank. Sanity Again was well across the river when a bow appeared, white foam flaring round it, coming in the opposite direction. I sounded the horn, but he clearly didn’t expect to find a deep seventy footer coming down. He actually speeded up, as if that was going to get him clear, and it meant that when his bow crunched into the side of Sanity Again’s, it not only removed a strip of paint, it actually bent the steel.

Thank you, Dream Maker.

It’s nothing that won’t be covered by a bit of paint, but it’s annoying even so. Somebody needs to tell Dream Maker’s steerer that:

• Craft coming downstream have right of way over craft going up and
• When navigating narrow winding channels, the steerer should be ready to meet deep draughted craft on the wrong side of the river

We spent last night at Bablock Hythe; the Ferry was open all day, so I must have been mistaken last time. Elanor duly arrived on her way home from her WRG camp, and Sally was ecstatic to meet her. I managed to take a photo of Sally lying on her rug in the well deck; as the week went on, she got more and more relaxed about being on her own out there:

Today, we came on down river to Eynsham, tying on the paid for moorings above the bridge. The farmer turned up as we were mooring and relieved us of a fiver, which he spends, he says, on providing sanctuary for ponies in the winter. He also introduced us to his two pet sheep, which suggests he may not be wholly serious about his farming.

Nev and John Campbell have arrived in Waimaru, and we’re spending the evening with them tonight; I thought I’d get this blog done in good time, before the jollifications get going.

Tomorrow, we’re going to stop at Osney to take the opportunity of exploring Oxford, now that we’re no longer dog sitting, then we’ll go on to Abingdon for a few days. I’ve finally managed to get a half decent shot of Sanity Again from across the water: