Cold start to 2010

Christmas and New Year

As so often happens, the New Year has continued the themes of the pre-Christmas period; for us boaters the main one has been surviving the cold weather. The canal continued frozen until just before New Year’s Eve, and, having had a quiet but very enjoyable Christmas Day, on Boxing Day we were getting seriously worried about the level in the water tank.

Fortunately, Will from Badger leant us some 25 litre drums and the key to the dumper which Elanor volunteered to drive (Elanor drives dumpers and mini diggers for wrg). Three of the drums already contained water and as we were decanting these into the tank Mick from Jacktar arrived in his four wheel drive Transit.

He insisted on taking the drums for us, and he and I filled them at the water point. As we were emptying these into the tank, David from Thea came along, Sheila having let him know what we were doing. He promptly gave a hand and then went off with Mick to get some water for his own boat. Meantime, Elanor started the dumper anyway and drove it up and down the track to try and break up the hard packed snow and ice.

The whole thing was an excellent example of boaters working together to deal with a difficult situation.

We also pumped out half the toilet tank, so that we were a lot more comfortable with the state of affairs.

On Sunday, three boats made it through the softening ice to the water point, Katalina taking the lead in reverse. Paul’s technique was to back up to the edge of the pack ice and then put the engine in forward gear, so that the disturbance of the prop wash broke up the pack and the boat could nudge its way into it.

On Monday we worked down to the water point ourselves, Sheila standing on the bow podging with the short shaft. We filled the tank, reversed onto the shop mooring (the shop being closed), had showers and ran two wash loads, and then went back onto the water point to refill. It being a flat calm, it wasn’t too difficult to reverse back to our mooring; the winding hole opposite the water point was still solid.

On Tuesday, we walked down into Poynton for supplies and whilst waiting at the bus stop were spotted by Peter Mason, who was on his way up to the yard to check that things were OK. Whilst he was giving us a lift, we told him we were a bit concerned about Just Siviting.

Austin and Liz are unable to get to their boat during the winter and we knew that they had left the heating set to run for a couple of hours every night. Austin believed that his solar panel would replace the electricity used by the Webasto, but we were not at all sure of this, especially as it had not occurred to us to sweep the snow off it for him until it had been covered for several days.

Peter had a set of keys for Just Siviting and gave them to us so that we could check it out. The batteries were indeed well run down, but not to the point where the Webasto had stopped working, and all looked well inside the boat. We left the engine running and gave the Webasto an extra hour just for luck.

Since then, we’ve been keeping an eye on the boat; I gave the engine another run just yesterday.

I think the only notable thing to report from Wednesday was a brief failure of my logic function. To save water, we’ve been flushing the loo with canal water dipped up in a bucket from a hole broken in the ice. Before we went down to the water point, Sanity had been sitting a little distance off the bank and we’d kept the ice broken between boat and bank to facilitate bucket dipping.

After our run down the canal, Sanity came in much more neatly, giving me cause to complain that it was now a long stretch forward to get the bucket in the (now ice free) water. Sheila looked at me blankly for a moment and said “But you can dip it off the other side now.”

She finally persuaded me to stop banging my head on the wall, as we are trying to sell the boat.

On New Year’s Eve there was very little ice to be seen, but the forecast was not encouraging. Accordingly, after we had been shopping (and got a lift back with Iain and Luisa this time) we took the boat out down to the Trading Post and filled her diesel tank. Then we reversed back onto the empty hire boat mooring to eat lunch, have showers and run wash loads, and then went onto the water point to refill.

Whilst this was going on, Stewart Hooper came past and we were able to order another ten bags of coal. He had delivered these by the time we got back to our mooring. Thus we now have coal, water and diesel to last for quite some time. We need to pump out again, but this can be done tomorrow.

New Year’s Day saw the forecasters vindicated as the cut was frozen solid once more. Whilst out for a short walk with Elanor we were surprised to see Dapper Dan force his way off his towpath mooring on the Deeps; later we saw him crunching past the moorings apparently heading for High Lane.

Today’s weather has brought snow in rather larger quantities than forecast. Elanor took us shopping to Handforth Dean, but had to leave her car at the bottom of the hill on the bridge over the Middlewood Way when we got back. Nonetheless it meant only a short carry to the boat with three of us to do the job. We are now well stocked with the heavy stuff like milk, fruit juice and red wine, so we can face the next week or so with some equanimity.

We have a couple of 8 litre water containers which we are using in the galley so that the only demand for water from the bow tank is for washing and washing up. The yard will reopen next week, so we will be able to beg showers and the use of a washing machine from them.