Heading South

Just as we were settling to pre-prandial beers last night, NB Jackdaw arrived on the wide, stopped on the far side by the reeds and just sat there. We assumed she was broken down, especially as her owner spent quite a bit of time down the weed hatch, but shouted queries from other moored boats didn't result in a rescue party.

We thought he must have summoned assistance from elsewhere, but in fact he just sat there all night. There was no wind, so the boat only vaguely drifted about. When we set off at eight this morning, I winded Sanity Again, came alongside Jackdaw and hailed him with no result.

So we carried on to the junction, which was in a state of mayhem. Two Anglo Welsh boats were manoeuvring, another privateer was pulling away from the service wharf and all was seeming chaos. Sheila had hopped off in the narrows and went and stood on the towpath bridge communicating with me by hand signals. (Owing to a couple of mis-judgments, the radio batteries were flat.)

She was told by a fellow boater that Jackdaw's owner had expressed his intention of mooring to a mud weight on the wide. He may have had a mud weight down, but it must have been pretty well hidden if he did. The boat was certainly drifting quite a lot.

We had an uneventful trip to Taft Wharf. Colwich lock was just starting to get busy when we worked through at half nine; no traffic our way, but quite a lot coming up, including Peruvian Skies.

The weather has turned cool and windy, so our work has been focused on the inside of the boat today, giving a thorough sweep through and brushing the loose mats. We hope that it's not going to get any windier as we plan to carry on through Rugeley tomorrow.