Hope deferred

It's been a pleasant day today, helped by the discovery that the overnight rain had substantially reduced the ice cover in the marina. It was possible to drive a cabin shaft through it from the back of the boat first thing this morning, so just before lunch, I tried starting the engine and giving the prop a blast of forward to see what effect it had on the ice.

The engine was sulky at first, smoking a bit and cutting out, but once going properly, seemed to settle down and behave itself. I suspect that a bit of condensation in the cylinders meant that I didn't get all four firing initially. Checking the oil and water had found nothing alarming, so hopefully it was just sulking a bit after the cold weather. The Hurricane heater, being installed in the same space, keeps the temperature well above freezing in there, and all the systems are well protected by antifreeze of course.

The prop wash blew broken ice well away from the stern; if I'd been keen to move, we could probably have left the marina today. Outside on the cut, there's no ice visible at all, and the odd boat has been seen moving.

Sadly, when I took a load of washing over to tumble dry (Sheila's still not going out much), Jenny and Dave pointed out that there's still more than two inches of ice off the service wharf, which is very shaded, so it looks as if it will be a couple of days yet before we can go over there for a pump out and diesel.

No matter, we'll just sit tight, reading the new edition of Waterways World, and see what the week will bring. We've got a quarter of a tank diesel; the main thing is whether we'll have to take some more out of the toilet tank before we can get it properly pumped.