Objectives achieved.

OK, I'm pretty weary (other descriptions are available), but reasonably pleased with progress. We were able to make a leisurely start this morning, as we just had the short run to Norbury to do. I got a paper from the local shop, and at about ten to nine we started getting the boat ready. Sheila steered, and we chugged gently along in half decent weather, a little cool, but quite calm and not actually raining.

As it was, we got to Norbury just after ten, but found that boats were already moving off and that there was a space just a boat's length short of the end of the embankment. We popped into the office to book our blacking slot for next spring. Sanity Again is now booked for the 1 - 5 May here; what's more, we get a 10% discount as a returning customer on the already very competitive price.

We'd not long finished lunch and settled down to read when the Ocado driver rang to say that he was in the pub car park. As usual, he was very helpful, trucking a lot of our stuff to the boat whilst I took the other two crates on our folding truck. This meant that we got the lot done in one move.

It was all present and correct, and after checking it over and stowing it away, we improved the shining hour by taking our recycling to the bins in the boat yard. They take everything bar plastic here.

Back at the boat, I had a bit of a sit down with the copy of Waterways World we'd bought (just catching up with the August issue), and then had a go at tweaking the position of the prop. That all went reasonably smoothly too; I've shifted it just a half inch back for now, so that there's now about 2.5 inches between the forward boss on the prop and the sternpost.

The main grief was tightening up the coupling again afterwards. It's a case of tightening all eight bolts in turn, using a crowbar to jam the coupling to stop it from rotating. Naturally, as you go round, you find that the first bolts you did can be nipped up a bit more when you get back to them.

Then I cleared everything out of the way, started up and ran the engine in both forward and reverse gears to make sure it wasn't all going to fall apart. It was all OK, but guess what, when I checked the bolts again…

/blur

I reckon they are all nice and tight now, but I'll check again tomorrow after we've been boating.

I'd planned to do risotto tonight, using some stock I've got in the frozen food compartment, but I forgot to take it out to defrost this morning. That's a pity, good job there's a pub serving food here…

/wahaha