High quality service

Like Mercia, Overwater is a marina that combines good design, a nice location and really nice people. It was finally decided to haul Sanity Again out last night, and if necessary put her on blocks for working on today. So at six, out she came, and it became apparent that the rudder stock had bent between the top of the blade and the uxter plate, thus causing the ends of the stock to bind in the bearings as they were no longer running into them perpendicularly.

Congratulations to Roger Millin for predicting exactly that in his comments yesterday.

Here's the rest of the tale in pictures:

Manoeuvring into position

Inserting the bow onto the trailer

Raising the boat on the trailer

Out of the water

Can you see the problem?

 Unless you are Mr Millin, you probably can't spot the bend, but looking at the bottom edge of the rudder shows the degree of the problem; it's supposed to be horizontal. Application of a bottle jack and wooden blocks between the bend and the end of the swim forced the stock straight again.

The guys next applied first WD40 and then Copaslip to both the upper and lower bearings. The lower one has always been a bit tight, to be honest. Simon the engineer did indulge in a bit of the tradesman's favourite game: "What cowboy bodged this up for you?" etc. etc. He reckoned that if the bottom bearing had been looser, the rudder would have lifted out of the cup, instead of bending.

No matter, once it was all done, Sanity Again was put back in her proper element:

On her way back down

Simon in Roman Emperor mode

This morning, we settled up with Colin, and were agreeably surprised by the bill. We have a £200 excess on our insurance, and we won't be claiming; the bill was well inside that for a haul out, one hour's work with the boat on the trailer and re-launch.

We've boated on to Nantwich, so are back on schedule. The steering is if anything freer than it was, though I don't recommend this approach to easing a stiff tiller…

Getting here just after twelve meant that we found a mooring with no bother. We've done a bit of shopping, especially at Clewlow's the butchers and pie shop.

Hunter's Pie and salad tonight, and Scotch Eggs tomorrow.

Yum.

/nobigdeal

Oh the shame

37 years boating and never cilled one yet… until this morning, when the dreaded accident occurred at Lock 10. We'd been having a straightforward morning, early start, Sheila lockwheeling, muggins steering. We'd got into a pattern of Sheila working ahead (most of the locks were with us but needed gates opening) and me working Sanity Again down the lock above.

There was a bit of traffic starting up after a while, so things got even more easy peasy as we didn't need to close bottom gates. That's probably how I got just that bit overconfident, didn't bother to take a centreline off with me, and didn't clock until just too late that she'd slipped back a tad in one of the shorter locks. In addition, the rudder wasn't pushed over properly, or had slid back. The last couple of inches of the rudder sat on the "babby", the wood fender forward of the actual cill, and by the time I realised, she was well and truly on.

I wound the bottom paddles down as quickly as I could, then raised a top paddle a bit to start the lock refilling. As it did, SA slid forward off the cill and re-floated. All looked ok, except that the helm was now amazingly stiff to turn. It improved a bit as we locked down 11 and moored on the visitor moorings above 12. A call to RCR meant that just after ten, Ian Stoykes turned up. He had a go at easing the rudder back into the cup (it's probably lifted slightly out of the cup the bottom end sits in on the skeg) but it was no go.

After consulting RCR, he arranged for us to come into Overwater Marina, just below Audlem. They have a slip for emergency use, and should be able to haul us out tomorrow afternoon. Meantime, they've given us free use of one of their visitor moorings.

So, here we are on a sunny day, nothing much we can do but wait to find out how much damage has been done and how much it's going to cost to put it right.

The rudder is still turning, so there must be a good chance that once it's out of the water, a bit of work with either a sledge hammer to persuade things back together, or with a hydraulic ram if the skeg is pushed up a bit will soon have it all working again.

I hope.

Meanwhile, I've got that post accident rumination "why didn't I take more care and watch more carefully?'

Oh well, I'm not the first experienced boater to do it, and I'm sure I won't be the last.