Watery winter blues

"Woke up this morning, and it was so co...old

Turned on the tap and bugger all happened"

Or something; lyrics are not my strongpoint. Thing is, the supply to and the flow from the water pump had frozen, partly because without the cratch (thank you Wilson's) the well deck over the tank is freezing down and the ventilator is feeding freezing air straight onto the underdeck pipework, partly because the fire had gone out overnight (I know, everyone else can keep Taybrite in) but mainly because it was  -9º C (16º F) at eight o'clock.

Fortunately, as usual, I had set up the early morning tea the night before, and there was enough water left in the kettle to provide that element for making the porridge (recipe: 1 cup oats to 1½ cups milk to 1 cup water, place in centre of oven on Gas Mark 3 whilst drinking tea in bed and getting up).

We finally got things flowing again by half eleven, having left the hatch into the underdeck space open and the fire well stoked whilst we pumped 10 gallons out of the toilet tank. Bob from Lyra then lent us a hair dryer, which meant I could get heat into the final nooks and crannies. I had a moment's panic when, after getting everything warm, the pump still didn't run after turning it back on, but that turned out to be  because the system was fully pressured. I opened a tap, and away we went.

Phew.

So far, touch wood, we seem to have got away with it; no sign of leaks from either the pump or the pipework. The Hep₂O fittings are very resilient, and Braidbar use the longest possible unjointed pipe runs with gentle bends in them, so they can take a certain amount of freezing without too much grief. Tonight, I'll stoke the stove and leave the hatch open, though there's not such a fierce frost forecast.

Last night, we kept being woken up by dramatic banging noises from the ice. Maybe we should have called the boat the Fram.

In amongst doing all this, I called Wilson's for a moan. Vicky promised she'd get back to me about a delivery of the repaired parts this week, but it's half past four now, and still no sign of Dick Vicky (sorry, it is the panto season). I also spoke to Peter at Braidbar in case we had probs with the pump (this was before we got it defrosted) and we had a useful chat, though he had problems of his own. His electricity supplier has cut them off for the day, in order to do some tree trimming.

This afternoon, since it was a nice day, Sheila did some more pontoon snow clearing, and I hauled stuff out from the lower bow locker and repacked it more neatly. This meant, on the plus side, I found the big funnel to use if we have to start topping up the water tank with 25 litre drums filled from the tap at the main building, and on the downside (literally) I nearly gave everyone a laugh by getting stuck upside down leaning into the depths of the locker.

The forecast is for a thaw for a few days at the end of this week and the start of next, which will be very welcome.