Busy day

It's been a busy sort of day; Sheila went down to the village to get a haircut this morning, so I took the opportunity to dust and sweep the boat. By the time she came back it was nearly lunchtime; I'd been pottering up and down to the skip compound with recycling and the like, a business that takes only five minutes if you go straight there and back, but this seldom happens.

There are folk to be nattered to about this and that, dogs to be admired, and the whole life of the marina going on around you.

After lunch, we got Sanity Again ready to boat; there's a whole load of odd bits and bobs to do when she's in winter lurking mode, from putting the Ecofan safely on its side on the dresser to rolling the cratch cover and unplugging the shoreline. Because I knew that we'd used quite a bit of diesel with the Hurricane, I gave the fuel filter priming button an experimental push. Sure enough, it was quite soft, the Hurricane having nicked fuel out of the line to the engine, so I opened up the bleed screw and pumped the air out.

This meant that the engine started first turn of the key, rather than coughing and spluttering for a bit.

Over at the service wharf, we soon had the pump out running; Sheila phoned the marina office to say that we wanted diesel, and Still Waters to say that we needed a cylinder of propane. Just as the pump out was finishing, Jules turned up to turn the fuel pump on, and as we were finishing that, Susi arrived from the shop to sell us the gas.

A blustery wind made getting back onto the pontoon interesting, and we did brush the stern of Black Pearl as we came in. Martin and Mina from Kilgarrah watched this manoeuvre but were kind enough not to make rude remarks. We had a good old natter with them whilst buttoning everything down again; in fact, I had time to walk across to the marina office and the shop and settle up and come back again and the conversation was still going on.

It's one of the great features of boating that there are such nice folk involved and so much to talk about.

We're now drinking a belated cup of tea whilst I write this blog post; sausage and mash tonight, Derby in the morning, methinks.