A bit of boating, and a BW puzzle

25th, 26th & 27th February

The very slow improvement in the weather has continued, more or less. At least we’ve not seen any more ice on the cut, and can begin to believe that we can stop worrying about it. Thursday morning was mild and damp; having gone to bed very early indeed the night before, we woke equally early in the morning.

We had decided to go to Marple for the day, but waited until half eight before setting off. This worked, in that when we got to Marple there was a space on the moorings between the two bridges. This was just as well, as the ones they’ve been working on since before Christmas are still not finished:




What is more, the contractors had left a workboat tied on half of the service block mooring, so we couldn’t have got in there if we had wanted to:



I know the weather has resulted in a lot of maintenance work being delayed, but it really shouldn’t take that long to do this job. BW are notorious for overestimating the cost of volunteer assisted restoration, and this sort of thing explains why. Discussing it with Elanor, we agreed that wrg would probably schedule about three weeks for this job. It entailed dredging out 100 metres of broken down washwall, driving Armco piling along the line, suitably back tied, and then backfilling with concrete. This is the stage they have reached after most of three months: finishing the job with stone coping is yet to be done.

The pictures were taken early on Thursday afternoon, and there was absolutely no sign of any work going on.

Having had a good shop in Marple we boated back to the Higher Poynton water point and filled the tank. We had a quick chat with Peter, and collected some post. This was a mixed bag: the mosquito netting, the butterfly folding draining rack and an unexpected letter. This last proved to be a really nice letter from a couple who have taken up boating after we had shown them round Sanity at Crick Show some years ago.

It is always really nice to hear from folk in this way, and even nicer if we can actually meet them.

It rained hard overnight and on Friday morning, so the set of pictures showing the floor being laid in Sanity Again shows some distinct wet boot prints on the protective cardboard. I’ve described progress with the new boat on the other blog as usual.

In the afternoon, Elanor turned up for an overnight stay and to bring some post. We took advantage of her presence to get a lift to IKEA, where we bought some new crockery for Sanity Again. It was an interesting trip through Hazel Grove and round the outskirts of Stockport as the IKEA is at Ashton under Lyne; we were very grateful that Elanor’s satnav found some short cuts through the traffic.

Arriving back at the boat, we all felt too tired to start cooking, which was a good excuse for a meal at the Boar’s Head and a pleasant family evening.

This morning it was damp and cold; Sheila and I composed the blog entry for Building Sanity Again whilst Elanor got going. We also heard some sad news that Allen Matthews, the founder of Ownerships, has passed away. We knew he was seriously ill with cancer, so this did not come as a complete surprise, but it is still a tragic loss of a man who changed the face of boat ownership in the UK.

One of the items of post that Elanor brought was a package from BW containing the licence plates for Sanity Again. We were both surprised and disappointed to find that the number allocated was 517491, since we had been expecting a number just short of 519000. As I understand it, numbers are allocated in order of date of registration, so getting this rather low number is like buying a new car now and being issued with a 2009 registration number.

We did some checking on the net; Jim Shead’s site indicates that the number is already in use, having been allocated last May, and entering it into the BW licence check page shows that there is a boat with this number with a current licence.

Under the circumstances, I suppose we could just not bother to buy a licence, since BW thinks we already have one. Instead, I have a phone call to the BW licence office to look forward to on Monday morning.

After Elanor had gone, and we had had some lunch, we pulled Sanity off her mooring and boated down to the water point, filled the tank, winded and then got a pump out and diesel from the Trading Post. The wind of course came up whilst we were doing this, which made for some tricky manoeuvring, but we coped with the aid of our 14 foot ash bow thruster.

Milder weather at last

23rd & 24th February

It’s been a quiet couple of days, but there is at last the first sense that Spring is nearly here, and about time too. Yesterday morning there was no ice in view on the cut when I got up to make the morning tea. This proved to be partly down to the strong wind which blew for the entire day.

When I walked down the hill to get the paper, I could see that where the water was sheltered from the wind it had frozen, and was DSI in places.

On my way back, I called in at the yard and collected a replacement top hinge for the bathroom door, the old one having worn substantially in six years of use. After coffee, I made the exchange which went reasonably smoothly with some help from Sheila.

Otherwise it was a very quiet day. After lunch, we took the recycling to the tip and called in again at the yard to collect the post. Despite the fact that we are expecting a number of things, only one package had arrived, namely some replacement batteries for the little single LED torch I keep on my keyring.

Back at the boat, Sheila continued to work on the insurance quotes for Sanity Again, and I researched suppliers of a new Ecofan. We are very pleased with our current fan, but it is the two bladed model and the longer boat will benefit from the higher throughput of the three bladed version.

The cheapest proved to be that sold by Midland Chandlers, if one ignored the delivery charge. By ordering it through Braidbar (since it’s for the new boat) we avoid paying the delivery and indeed have the advantage of their trade discount.

The weather has taken a distinct turn for the better today. It was wild and windy overnight, with some splashes of rain, but it was positively mild this morning, and has further improved as the day went on. It has been another day for pottering about, albeit with the doors open for some of the time and with a genial sense that the year has turned.

Sheila’s been to get her hair done, but otherwise we have carried on with our various tasks on the boat. It is a great relief not to be worrying about whether we need to get more water before the canal freezes again; we are not expecting sub zero temperatures for the next few days at least.

Tomorrow we may well take the boat down to the Trading Post for diesel and a pump out; otherwise we have no fixed plans.

And the wintry winds wailed...

21st & 22nd February

Yesterday morning, we woke to a soggy, snowy scene. The canal had a covering of mushy ice with a slushy snow overlay which was already thawing at 7.30. We had a quiet morning on the boat, putting the time to good use by sorting one of the desk drawers. This is in anticipation of moving everything onto Sanity Again next month, and we were able to jettison a good proportion of its contents.

The weather in the afternoon was not much more enticing, but we forced ourselves to get out and take a bit of a walk in damp and chilly conditions. On our way back to the boat, it actually began to sleet again.

Never let it be said that we do not anticipate the future; after a cup of tea, I went on line to order some mosquito netting. Sheila plans to make fly screens for the side hatches and Houdini hatches on Sanity Again, and it made sense to order the material while we have an address to send it to.

It was a colder night last night, and the cut was seriously frozen over this morning. It appeared to be DSI, but in the absence of a visible duck it was hard to be sure. I prodded the ice with the poker whilst leaning out of the side hatch, and it proved to be about a quarter of an inch thick but we really need a standard duck to test it in such circumstances.

On my way back from buying a paper, I noticed a drake walking about on the ice, which resolved the issue.

After coffee, I cleaned both pairs of boots and gave them a coat of wax. We are still using up some fancy Renapur leather balsam, beeswax and jojoba oil no less, but Peter Mason tells us that traditional dubbin would be just as good. Having started his career as a leather chemist he should know what he’s talking about, so next time we will resist the blandishments of the salesman.

Incidentally, his advice for treating leather furniture is to spray it with Mr Sheen.

Having missed Peter on Friday, we went over to the yard after lunch and spent a pleasant couple of hours about equally divided in discussing progress with Sanity Again and nattering about other things. I’ll talk about this in more detail when I post to the other blog on Friday, but we are getting into the end stage of the build. Progress may slow down a little for a while, as one of the joiners has to go into hospital for an operation, but we are still on course for delivery just before the stoppages end.

Back on Sanity, we had a cup of tea and spent some time working on our analysis of alternative insurance policies for Sanity Again. I found a useful template in Numbers, the iWork spreadsheet application, which allows you to draw up an inventory of all the portable property to be covered by the contents insurance.

This is a worthwhile, if scary exercise; the number in the bottom right corner of the table is always much larger than you had expected. On the other hand, doing it this way saves a nasty shock if some disaster did leave you with only the clothes you were standing up in.

Oh, Snow!

18th, 19th & 20th February

I feel really sorry for those who have adopted the liveaboard lifestyle in the last six months, because this winter is driving me bananas. All I can say is, don’t give up, it’s normally much easier than this. Usually we have one or at most two fairly short lived episodes of frost and ice, and otherwise it’s the wind and rain that we have to contend with.

This winter, we’ve had the long freeze, and then the ice has retreated and returned and retreated again, so that every time you think you're clear of it, back it comes.

We made a lazy start on Thursday morning, and were pleased to see that the ice was looking dull and grey, indicating that the thaw was well advanced. I walked down the hill to get a paper and we spent most of the morning doing computer stuff. After lunch, there was very little ice left and we took Sanity down to the water point.

Once moored again, we had a bit of exercise taking the dirty oil from the day before down to the tip. A full water tank meant that we could still shower, so I got Sheila to cut my hair before washing the bits off.

Yesterday, we woke to find snow on the ground again. It looked pretty wet, but it wasn’t an encouraging sight. We plodged over to the boatyard for the weekly review of progress on Sanity Again; Peter was away so we just took the pictures and came away.

At midday, we had just made the lunchtime sandwiches when our Ocado delivery driver rang to say he was ten minutes away. We shared a quick mug of soup, and I gobbled a sandwich before we went over to the yard to receive our groceries, two hours before they were scheduled to arrive.

It just goes to show, not everything is delivered late at a boat builders. It gave us an excuse to have a coffee and natter with Susan, which was very pleasant.

We then lugged the bags back to Sanity and finished eating lunch. Stowing the goods takes a while; I must say that this strategy of ordering groceries for delivery means I’m keeping the cupboards well stocked.

Having uploaded a set of pictures to Flickr, we did a blog entry on Building Sanity Again.

There was no ice in sight this morning, but the forecast is for another freeze. We walked down into Poynton to buy some fresh fruit and veg, and a couple of nice loaves from Greggs. I also popped into Mates, the DIY store, for a roll of that boaters' essential, Duck Tape, and took the opportunity to buy a big funnel.

For the last six years, I’ve been using a rather small one for putting oil into the engine. My bad shoulder means that Sheila has been assisting with oil changes*, and she has persuaded me to do the rational thing and get a big funnel that lets the oil flow in reasonably quickly.

Sheila ran a further washload, thereby bringing the laundry up to date, and after lunch we went back to the water point to refill the tank. We’ve reversed Sanity into her mooring, so that if need be we can pump out the toilet tank if we are frozen in for any length of time.

The weather outlook is for another five or six days of overnight frost; when we get into March we may actually see some milder weather. At this rate, we will be doing Sanity Again’s shakedown cruise in the wind and rain.

*I.e., doing all the work.

Back on board, and another viewing

16th & 17th February

Yesterday morning saw the return of Bruce and Elanor from Burton. The weather coming back over the Peak District was quite wintry once more which slowed them up a bit, but they arrived in time to go over to the boatyard.

There we had a discussion, mostly with Andy, but with input from John and Peter, about the layout of the power outlets and cable channels over the desk in the study in Sanity Again. It also gave Elanor a chance to show off her new leather jacket to Peter, who used to tan things for a living.

There followed a quiet family afternoon and evening.

Today has been much busier, since we had a viewing of Sanity booked for mid morning. We were up betimes and Elanor, perforce, had to make a fairly early start as well so that we could clean and tidy the boat. Bob and Nicky duly turned up just after half ten and had a good look through the boat. They had another four boats to look out in the course of the day so set off again without so much as a cup of coffee.

They were very pleasant, and being existing boat owners well informed about what they were looking at. We can only wait to hear if they are interested.

After lunch, we set to and did a routine engine service which went quite smoothly. The next one will be a major service and hopefully the last one we will do on Sanity.

The weather has turned just a bit colder again and we are once more frozen in; we’ll have to hope for a break in the next few days so that we can refill the water tank.

Away for a day

14th & 15th February

I'm typing this post on Sunday, and scheduling it to appear on Monday, as family affairs mean that I'm off the boat today. On Sunday, we had a quiet day on board, pottering about on a beautifully sunny and frosty morning. There was a bit of ice across the cut when we woke, but it gradually melted away as the day went on.

These days, I use two weather sites to kep an eye on what's likely to happen. One is the MetOffice site, and the other Accuweather, which gives more detail for later periods, though it's necessary to allow for rapidly decreasing confidence beyond five days.

At present, there's a bit of a discrepancy between the two forecasts, with the Met Office being a touch more pessimistic about things. It will be interesting to see which proves the more accurate, especially as the Accuweather one suggests a return to milder weather within the week.

I'll get back to normal posting routine on Wednesday.

An ice free interval

11th, 12th & 13th February

The ice came; the ice went. Any day now, we’re expecting the ice back again (but not for long, we hope). On Thursday morning, we had DSI, that is duck supporting ice. As the day wore on it ceased to be DSI and we saw some pathetic ducks; one in particular stood still too long so that one foot went through the ice. It then stood there on one leg with the other hanging in the water. Another duck fell through the ice and sat in a duck shaped hole unable to swim away and, for a while, unable to climb out.

It was a very fine day made even more cheerful by the sight of Sanity Again out of the paint dock. We had gone to dump rubbish in the skip and to collect post from the yard and had the chance to gloat over our shiny new boat.

Previous to this, Sheila had spared my blistered heels by going to get a paper and a copy of Waterways World. We had a quiet afternoon, with much pottering about. I had promised to improve Skye’s stern mooring line by replacing the loop knotted in its end with a proper eye splice.

Having been in there for some years, it was one tough knot and took about thirty minutes work with a big screw driver, a solid fid and a pair of pliers to unravel. But it came out in the end, and I think the final result is well worth while.

On the way to and from Skye I had a chance for a chat with Chris and Denise from San Serriffe, Braidbar no 16 though sign written as number 14 (it’s a long story)

Yesterday there was still ice about on the cut and we had a very lazy start. We spent the latter part of the morning reviewing progress on Sanity Again as recorded over on the other blog with photographs on Flickr.

We had some excitement, followed by disappointment when a canal magazine (name withheld to avoid embarrassment) asked if they could undertake a review of Sanity Again. Naturally we said yes, only to have the Editor change his mind and decide not to do it.

We were both feeling very tired, so had an early night, a decent night’s sleep and as a result an early start. We wanted to do a shopping trip to Poynton, so set off at 8.45. This timing worked well, as we’d finished by about five to ten and had to wait only for a short while before catching the bus back.

The ice which had been slowly clearing yesterday was completely gone by lunch time today. After lunch, we therefore pulled out of the mooring and went to top up the water tank and get a pump out. There was a little bit of ice around further down the canal and another hard frost will see it back again I’m sure, but the year is now far enough advanced that we are very unlikely to see the ice stick around for more than a few days at a time.

We picked up a copy of Canal Boat this morning which had the answers to the Christmas quiz. We reckon we got 67 out of a possible 70; we had submitted a joint entry, but the magazine has announced that Sheila came second.

This means that they owe us another bottle of whisky, but knowing Canal Boat, we are not holding our breath.

A little ice in sight

9th & 10th February

Winter’s final fling has been arriving rather more slowly than forecast; to which we have no objection at all. There was no ice around at all yesterday morning, and my walk down the hill to buy a paper and post a repeat prescription order was undertaken in pleasant conditions.

It was one of those days for pottering about, so there’s not a lot more to say about it; we finished sawing up and stacking our collection of firewood and most of the rest of the day was spent indoors. Sheila has been varying her work making port hole doilies for Sanity Again with phoning and e-mailing for insurance quotes for the new boat.

We haven’t come to a decision about this yet, but I’ll mention the outcome both here and on the other blog.

Today, there was just a trace of ice on the water when I got up to make a cup of tea at half seven, and by the time we’d finished breakfast at around nine a skin of it was spreading out over the canal. The Trading Post doesn’t open on Wednesdays, so we took the boat down to the shop mooring as soon as we’d finished our first thing tasks; we had an Ocado delivery booked for the one to two pm slot so it made sense to get down there before somebody else did.

Once there, we had a bit of time chatting to Barry and Annie Cooper who have just moved onto Braidbar 119, The Shouting End, and to Dave Ballinger who had come for a final design meeting about Braidbar 121, Load of Hay, the shell we towed the other day.

Since we would be refilling the water tank before going back to the mooring, Sheila took the opportunity to run two washloads during the morning. She also walked down to buy a paper; my nice new boots have given me a pair of nice new blisters on my heels, so I’m trying not to do too much walking in them for the next couple of days.

I made myself useful by taking Dave Ballinger to look at the washbasin in Just Siviting since they’re thinking of having a similar one in Load of Hay. Not only did our Ocado order arrive in good time, but an order from Julian Graves turned up as well. As soon as we had the Ocado stuff on board, we pulled forward onto the water point since the weather was looking a bit threatening.

We checked off the Ocado order against the delivery note, just managing to finish before the tank was full. Then we went down to the winding hole, turned and came back onto the mooring. By now there was a bitter northerly wind, which made reversing onto the mooring quite tricky; in fact Sanity decided to fall in love with Katalina on the towpath mooring opposite, and showed it by giving her bow a big soppy kiss.

This was despite Sheila wielding the long shaft vigorously; the canal bed around there is very muddy and she thought that she had lost the shaft a couple of times.

Once safely tied up, I took about half an hour to stow away the groceries and then we settled down to relax for the rest of the afternoon. I did take some time to check out In-Line Filters since we’ll need to do a couple more oil changes before we leave Sanity. Their prices look quite attractive, but by the time I had paid delivery and VAT the final bill would be not much short of £12 per filter. Accordingly, I abandoned the order, rang Beta Marine and ordered them from there instead.

Winter returns

7th & 8th February

Yesterday was Sunday, so we had a very lazy start and finally surfaced at around 9 o’ clock. It was one of those days for leisurely pottering; the major activity was taking some recycling to the tip, which involves a walk of all of half a mile each way.

We had a minor domestic incident when I went to get the bag which contains the stuff for waxing boots out of the cupboard under the washing machine. It’s a bit dark down there, so it wasn’t until I got through into the saloon that Sheila drew my attention to the fact that I had Brasso all down the leg of my trousers.

The drama was accentuated by the fact that she did not at first identify the yellow goo, and thought I must have encountered something even more revolting. After the panicky running around with pieces of kitchen towel had subsided, we discovered that the family size bottle of Brasso which was sharing a storage box with boot waxing stuff had rusted through and sprung a leak.

Fortunately, partly to allow for such a contingency, we do store all such materials in B&Q's best polythene storage boxes, so it was possible to clear up by bringing the box through into the galley, rescuing what could be wiped off, and jettisoning the rest. It will now be apparent why the trip to the tip seemed a good idea. We have also made a note to stop buying Brasso in litre containers.

In the afternoon, we converted some more of the pallet to kindling, and otherwise had a quiet time in the boat, sheltering from the deteriorating weather. In the evening, I cooked another meal from the new Indian cookbook; Sheila says I am to say that it was fabulous. It does seem to be the case that cooking these meals with just a few stir fried spices, sometimes whizzed to a paste with the magic wand, produces a much lighter and tastier meal than resorting to a jar of curry paste.

The weather has been even more wintry today, with snow flurries and a biting northerly wind. I braved it to go and get a paper in the morning, and after lunch we walked round to the yard to hand over a cheque for the latest stage payment on Sanity Again, and to sneak a look at the progress of Andy Russell's work on her signwriting.

She looks absolutely fabulous already; Andy is pulling out all the stops, with extra touches like her name in the non-slip on the well deck gunwale. It will all be done by Friday, and she will have been moved out of the paint dock by then, so I should be able to post some really interesting pictures at the end of the week.

When we got back to the boat from the yard, we decided to play safe and top up the water tank again. It was still 60% full, but there is a real risk of ice in the next couple of days, and this way we can go on taking showers for a while before we have to move back into water conservation mode.

There’s no obvious end in sight to this cold spell, there’s a blocking high just to the north of the British Isles, and it’s always hard to predict when such a system will decide to move away.

Out and about in the sun

4th, 5th & 6th February

We’ve been taking advantage of a spell of milder weather, especially as it looks as if we are going to have another period of frost and ice.

On Thursday, I went and got a paper from the nearest newsagent, and we spent a bit of time sawing up the pallet we fished out of the cut the other day. We also took delivery of another ten 25 kg bags of mixed ovoids from Stuart Hooper. We had a discussion with him about some hooks for the end of short shafts he has for sale. Unfortunately, because they are hand forged, they are very expensive at £25 a piece, and he admits that he has had a shaft fitted with one stolen from his boat.

The equivalent from Midland Chandlers is around £10 and I suspect we will be satisfied with the rather inferior product on this occasion.

In the afternoon, we took a short walk along the towpath to Bridge 16, down to the Middlewood Way and so back to the moorings. On the way, we noticed that Otter, a GRP cruiser, has sunk on her moorings just a few pontoons along from us. On our return to the boat, I emailed the Brycelands so that they could alert the owner, but it turned out they already knew about it.

Yesterday, we did our regular review of progress on Sanity Again as described on the other blog. She is coming on well, and the exciting news is that she is going to be the Braidbar show boat at the Crick Show this year. There will be an appointment system for viewing her, and when the details of that have been finalised I’ll take care to post them on both blogs.

Since the bitterly cold wind had died away, we had a longer walk in the afternoon up into Lyme Park where we could see the progress they’ve made with some dry stone wall repairs despite the ferocious weather. The ground is still very boggy, even on well made tracks, and one result of this exercise was to reinforce my determination to get a new pair of boots, since my old pair are now leaking really badly.

This gave us the excuse to do some boating today, when we took Sanity to Marple for the first time this year. Although it hadn’t felt that cold overnight, there was just a bit of cat ice here and there on the water. Sheila was a bit anxious about this, but it never got worse than a few millimetres thick and had no effect on our blacking.

In Marple we were able to find almost everything we were looking for, including a nice new pair of boots. They are HiTec again, but with a much more solid sole and a heavier full grain leather upper. I just hope they last better than the last pair, though it must be admitted that our lifestyle can be very hard on the footwear.

They have not finished working on the towpath moorings in Marple, so again we had to reverse onto a mooring on the Upper Peak Forest, but in a flat calm this manoeuvre went remarkably smoothly this time.

After lunch, we boated back to Higher Poynton; the ice had entirely disappeared. We filled the diesel tank at the Trading Post and then went onto the water point. Having winded at the far end of the Deeps, we reversed into our mooring so that if we get frozen in here again, we can pump out the toilet tank.

The forecast for the next couple of weeks is for -4 or -5 ºC, although daytime temperatures will be mostly positive. Time will tell if this means more enduring ice on the cut; this is proving to be a very long winter.

Winter reluctantly sidles away

2nd & 3rd February

We are slowly emerging from winter in fits and starts. Yesterday, the ice was almost gone first thing in the morning, and by the time I had walked down the hill to buy a paper it was hard to spot the floating patches that were left. We had booked an Ocado delivery for the 1 pm to 2 pm slot, and planned to have an early lunch before walking over to the yard to take it.

This scheme had to be modified when the Ocado driver rang just before half eleven to say that he only had our drop off to do, and would we take it early? Nothing loth, we nipped over there, planning to store the bags in the bungalow and collect them when we boated over to refill the water tank.

However, when we saw the limited number of bags involved, we decided just to walk back carrying it all. It turned out that this decision was only marginally correct, as our hands were pretty sore by the time we got back to the boat. Nonetheless, it was good to get everything stashed away in nice time for lunch.

Whilst on the water point, I nipped into the yard and had conversations with Peter, Reg and John about a number of design details on Sanity Again. I also collected the draft brochure about Sanity which ABNB had sent. By the time I had done all this, the water tank was nearly full and we boated back to the mooring.

The rest of the day passed quietly; there were a few minor corrections to the brochure to be emailed to ABNB, and further progress was made with the layout and design of The Beale Park Bulletin.

Today has seen winter come sneaking back just a litle, in that there was a skin of ice on the canal this morning, and some rather wet snow is falling in a desultory fashion as I write this. It stayed dry long enough for the trip down the hill for a newspaper, however, after we had made an extremely lazy start once we knew we wouldn’t be moving the boat today.

This afternoon, we got a bit of exercise breaking up a pallet which we had rescued from the cut the other day, so that we have a new supply of kindling. Apart from that, there’s been very little to tempt us out of doors. At least we have the consolation that this is the last official month of winter, and although the forecast looks very soggy, there’s no real risk of another big freeze.

We have no special plans for tomorrow, but will be doing our weekly review of progress on Sanity Again on Friday morning. If the weather has stayed mild, we might actually boat to Marple on Saturday; my boots are now seriously leaking, and I really must get a replacement pair.

A visit to view

31st January & 1st February

We’ve had a very domestic couple of days, so there’s not a lot to tell. Yesterday we started by taking all the recycling down to the tip, and then gave the boat a thorough clean.

It couldn’t be quite as thorough as we liked; we had planned to wash the side of the boat, but we are frozen in again and didn’t want to waste the water. Apart from that, I have carried on with my newsletter design and Sheila with her crochet.

In the evening, I roasted a turkey crown; the cunning plan had been to use this as an excuse to cook the Christmas pudding we didn’t have at Christmas. The only thing is, the reason we didn’t have it then was because we were conserving water and it would have taken too much to steam it, and we are right back in that situation now.

Ho hum, we’ll just have to buy another turkey. We’ve got until April to eat the pudding, so at this rate, we could get through a lot of turkey.

Today, we started off by putting the final touches to making the boat look beautiful. Our visitors turned up in good time, which was nice, and we had a very pleasant visit. They have got some other boats to look at, but seemed very impressed with Sanity. In addition, they have a boat of their own to sell, so it may be a while before they can make us a serious offer, even if they decide to do so.

As may be imagined, we’ve had a quiet time for the rest of the day and are looking forward to an early night tonight.

Tomorrow, we’ve got an Ocado delivery arriving at lunchtime; by the look of things we’ll have to carry it back to the boat unless the ice disappears more quickly than we expect.