An ice free interval

11th, 12th & 13th February

The ice came; the ice went. Any day now, we’re expecting the ice back again (but not for long, we hope). On Thursday morning, we had DSI, that is duck supporting ice. As the day wore on it ceased to be DSI and we saw some pathetic ducks; one in particular stood still too long so that one foot went through the ice. It then stood there on one leg with the other hanging in the water. Another duck fell through the ice and sat in a duck shaped hole unable to swim away and, for a while, unable to climb out.

It was a very fine day made even more cheerful by the sight of Sanity Again out of the paint dock. We had gone to dump rubbish in the skip and to collect post from the yard and had the chance to gloat over our shiny new boat.

Previous to this, Sheila had spared my blistered heels by going to get a paper and a copy of Waterways World. We had a quiet afternoon, with much pottering about. I had promised to improve Skye’s stern mooring line by replacing the loop knotted in its end with a proper eye splice.

Having been in there for some years, it was one tough knot and took about thirty minutes work with a big screw driver, a solid fid and a pair of pliers to unravel. But it came out in the end, and I think the final result is well worth while.

On the way to and from Skye I had a chance for a chat with Chris and Denise from San Serriffe, Braidbar no 16 though sign written as number 14 (it’s a long story)

Yesterday there was still ice about on the cut and we had a very lazy start. We spent the latter part of the morning reviewing progress on Sanity Again as recorded over on the other blog with photographs on Flickr.

We had some excitement, followed by disappointment when a canal magazine (name withheld to avoid embarrassment) asked if they could undertake a review of Sanity Again. Naturally we said yes, only to have the Editor change his mind and decide not to do it.

We were both feeling very tired, so had an early night, a decent night’s sleep and as a result an early start. We wanted to do a shopping trip to Poynton, so set off at 8.45. This timing worked well, as we’d finished by about five to ten and had to wait only for a short while before catching the bus back.

The ice which had been slowly clearing yesterday was completely gone by lunch time today. After lunch, we therefore pulled out of the mooring and went to top up the water tank and get a pump out. There was a little bit of ice around further down the canal and another hard frost will see it back again I’m sure, but the year is now far enough advanced that we are very unlikely to see the ice stick around for more than a few days at a time.

We picked up a copy of Canal Boat this morning which had the answers to the Christmas quiz. We reckon we got 67 out of a possible 70; we had submitted a joint entry, but the magazine has announced that Sheila came second.

This means that they owe us another bottle of whisky, but knowing Canal Boat, we are not holding our breath.