Wednesday 23 August 2017

Catching up with yesterday

Yesterday was a generally successful day with one major frustration, since resolved. We wanted to arrive at Poynton at around half ten to maximise the chances of getting a mooring on the Deeps. It’s normally about 90 minutes from Riley Green and we had a bit more distance to cover, plus the chance of having to wait at the two dredging sites, the dumping area and the dredging itself. So we set off just on half eight.

Wanting to get a wash load in on a shortish trip, I’d run the Webasto for an hour from half six to half seven and the engine from eight to half past. This meant that there was hot water available, the alternator had finished the bulk charge phase with the batteries and I could get the wash load on straightaway.

It was a pretty routine chug on a pleasant morning until we reached bridge 20 where we found a boat adrift. It had been tied on three lines to piling hooks and all three had disengaged from the rather battered Armco. I should explain that 20 is the shallowest bridge on the Macc and the coal boats in particular have trouble getting through it. Using the technique I described the other day means passing that stretch of Armco just before the bridge at a fair clip, so it’s frankly not a wise place to leave a boat unattended at all, much less on piling hooks which are nothing like as reliable as chains. As soon as the tension slacks off the mooring line, the hook can drop down and potentially come free of the waling rail.

Sheila put our bow into the bridge hole so that I could hop off. I hauled the boat back into position and refixed the hooks as best I could. Returning to the boat, I found that she was well stuck in the silt. Running the engine in forward, leaning on the arch from the bow and finally getting off and hauling on the bow line made precisely no difference. In the end, Sheila had to reverse out until parallel with the moored boat, rev up and charge the bridge, whereupon we slid through.

On we went past Lyme View marina on the home run. I took over steering so that Sheila could hop off at bridge 16 and walk ahead to assess the moorings. It was now a bit after ten, so a generally good run despite the time taken out an bridge 20. Two boats left as we arrived on the Deeps and we were soon moored about halfway along.

Having closed up the boat, we ambled along to dump rubbish and see who was about in the Braidbar office. Here we found Donna hard at work and had a good old natter with her and with Laurence, whose boat Elizabeth Anne is about half complete. We were able to have a look through a most interesting boat – another hybrid drive and with some interesting features in the fit out, evidence of James’s input to the design.

Donna agreed that as the Braidbar online mooring was currently free, it would be handy for us to put Sanity Again on it, both from the point of view of access to assess the work we want doing and to keep the mooring clear of interloper boats who are inclined to pinch it as an overnight stop.

We’d collected our post from Amazon, consisting of my new Kindle Paperwhite and some circular knitting needles for Sheila which will make her work on my Guernsey easier. Yes, that’s right, I’m doing rather well out of this!

The trouble started when I went to register the Kindle. It connected to the iPhone hotspot ok but then refused to register with Amazon. I tried a few suggestions from the relevant forums but in the end resorted to a very leisurely live chat conversation with Amazon Customer Services. From this it transpired that the Firmware version was out of date. I had to download the update to the laptop and this morning transferred it to the Kindle. After the Kindle had updated, sure enough it saw the Amazon server no bother and agreed it belonged to me.

So, all’s well that ends well but an FAQ item advising checking the Firmware version and updating if necessary under these circumstances would have saved a lot of grief and hassle.

Heigh ho, it’s now half ten on a damp morning. We’re waiting for Peter Mason to come and see us about our jobs. Sitting down to type this lot hasn't worked as a strategy for getting him to turn up. When I’ve uploaded this post, I’ll try putting the kettle on…



Location:Higher Poynton

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