Into winter moorings

It's been a busy day. Elanor arrived with Sally just before eight, and I then popped into the village to get a paper and some veg to make a stew tonight. We'd planned to get a pump out and fill with diesel on the way into the marina, but mature thought suggested that this might not be an optimal manoeuvre:

• Working the boat with Sally "helping" is tricky enough, without trying to do a self pump out as well
• The toilet tank is only just over three quarters full
• There is admittedly just a quarter tank of diesel left, but we'll only be using it for central heating now, and it's recommended to use as much as possible of the summer diesel before filling it with the winter formulation.

So we decided to go straight onto the mooring. This was made more interesting by the aforesaid Sally effect (she likes to stand behind you on the stern deck, so that you are constantly worrying about kicking her into the cut) and by the fact that I had to hover for a while to let a CanalTime boat pass by before starting the turn into the arm that leads into the marina.

We'd already taken a bit more time than usual setting off; I had Sally with me on the stern, and Sheila went round pulling up the pins and pushing off the bow. Except that, when she hopped ashore to do this last, the towpath gave way under her foot and she sat down. The foot was well stuck, so Sally and I practised our Olympic looking as the stern drifted out into the cut whilst Sheila apparently just sat there on the towpath. Eventually she got free and normal service was resumed.

I'm pleased to say that no harm was done, good crew being hard to find these days, so one has to hang onto what one can get.

/blur

Good steerers are hard to find, too, and I have to admit that I misjudged the turn into the marina entrance slightly. The arm isn't quite square to the mainline, so you need to overshoot it a little and turn back into it. I overdid this, ended with the boat stuck across the cut and had to get Sheila to shaft the bow round. Typically, I was being followed by one of the Shakespeare hire boats (will they rename them the Earl of Oxford hire fleet?) being steered by a staff member who, of course, made the turn with no trouble at all.

This is a huge marina; it takes a significant time to boat from the entrance to your pontoon, which only comes into view after a while. There was the usual fun turning Sanity Again into her slot, but that went reasonably smoothly, with only a bit of shoving and heaving by Sheila at the bow.

Once secured, Sheila looked after the pooch whilst I did the running around getting out and rigging the shoreline and starting the water tank refilling. During the day, we've also disposed of a load of recycling (really good here, just separate the glass from everything else) and Sheila has run three loads of washing and tumbled two of them.

The other good news is that the 3 connection, which was pretty rubbish on the towpath at Willington, is reasonably fast in the marina.

I took Sal for a good walk this afternoon, crossing the canal by the footbridge near the marina entrance and walking east along the towpath for half an hour or so. There are some fields by the marina where you can run dogs loose, but I haven't sussed those out yet.

Tomorrow, we're going to take the bus into Burton to collect out first pairs of glasses, put the IWA trophy in for engraving and do some other retail therapy.