Tuesday 19 August 2014

Back to Marple

As I said yesterday, we'd planned to stop short of Marple today, just for the change of scene, but it was not to be.

We made a good start, waking early and getting going just before eight. Sheila winded Sanity Again in the Upper Basin, stirring up a fair bit of mud as she did so. Then we stopped on the water point just before the narrows and filled the tank. The water pressure was very strong; indeed, it kept blowing the connector off the bit screwed onto the tap until I replaced the latter with a new one.

Once re-watered, there was a pretty straightforward run down to the junction – nothing coming, so round we went and I abandoned my lookout position in the bow to set the washing machine running. Two lift bridges and two swingers went by without incident; the last of these I kept open for a following boat which passed Sheila waiting on the bridge landing.

They'd been catching up quickly anyway in a shallow draughted boat.

I'd marked three possible mooring spots on the Garmin as we went the other way, though the first of these we knew to be shallow. So, it transpired, were the other two, at least at the moment with the pound down again despite the further rain. Indeed, at the last one I got Sanity Again well stemmed up and it took a bit of shafting and reversing to get away.

There was nothing for it but to carry on back to Marple, where we found a spot bow to bow with Skye, Braidbar 85, and Martin her owner. In fact Martin helpfully pulled back a few feet to let us in. There's an unusable stretch on these VMs where there's been an obstruction underwater for as long as we've been coming here.

Work this afternoon has involved more ceiling washing, checking and clearing the prop of a tough reed root impaled on one of the blades and starting the next fender.

That took us up to tea time, since when we've been loafing about...

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