...and it's Friday the 13th. I don’t normally suffer from Triskaidekaphobia, but today was the kind to make you wonder. It all started well, with us surfacing around six, and getting underway by seven. The alternator was noisy again, so we ran the engine in neutral and at 1000 rpm for a bit whilst Sheila made some bread dough from a kit, so things weren’t too bad by the time we set off.
Up Double Rail Lock we went, only to discover that the pound above was seriously low, as in around two foot down. Sanity Again struggled to get out of the lock, and Sheila was working hard to find what was left of the deep water. At last she got away, only to have trouble getting through the next bridge hole. I had already abandoned ship, with the aim of walking up to the next lock, Kilby, to run some water down.
As Sanity Again came through the bridge hole, there were awful grinding noises from underneath, followed by a terrific clunk. Sheila had already dropped into neutral, but thereafter she heard a lot of noise from beneath boat. Eventually, we made it to the lock, only to find Braidbar number 70, Phoebe, coming down it. This was good in one way, as it meant they were running a lockfull of water into the pound, but bad in another as the two boats had to pass in the depleted channel.
Crewed by John and Margaret, we had time for quite a chat as, snail like, the passage was completed. John is an avid reader of this blog in the winter, he tells me, so it was good to make their acquaintance on two counts.
As we came out of the lock, two BW guys turned up, They were the ones we’ve been seeing from time to time for the last few days, surveying the state of all the locks on this section. At least it saved us from having to ring BW to report to the dropped pound. Apparently it’s been leaking for some time, but there’s no resources to do anything about tracing it.
We slogged on working uphill, mostly with me steering and Sheila lock working, as this seemed to suit our physical abilities better. Regular readers of this blog will know that usually we take it day and day about to steer, but Sheila was finding it really hard work swinging on the ropes in the lock to control the boat as the water level rose.
It’s always a problem with taking a single boat up a broad lock. For most of these, there was a bollard in the right place, more or less, to put the bowline round. Opening the ground paddle on the same side should then mean that the boat was pinned to the wall of the lock, but this doesn’t always work as well as it should.
Today’s locks came in two main groups, of nine then five, so I gave Peter Mason a call in the pound between. We discussed the two problems, the alternator and the noisy prop. He gave me some advice about diagnosing the latter, and undertook to ring Beta about the former, if I would email him with the symptoms.
Once we stopped at the top of the flight, just by Bridge 74, we had lunch, eating the buns which I’d baked from Sheila’s dough as we went along, and then I emailed Peter. I was investigating the prop when he called back, as a result of which we’re meeting Sam Matts at Foxton tomorrow. Sam has a spare alternator in stock, so hopefully it will be a straightforward swap.
The prop, meanwhile, turns out to have a right ding on the tip of one of the blades. A piece about the size of the top joint of my thumb has been bent forward. This would happen just after we’ve had her on the dock, of course, but at least it’s nothing worse, like damage to the drive train. We’ll have to find an opportunity to dock her again some time, and see if we can beat out the bend. In the meantime, we’ll just have to put up with a bit of prop sing; at least the fishermen won’t be able to complain they didn’t hear us coming.
We’ve walked into Fleckney and shopped. The nearest bridge is number 73 in fact, but this mooring is near enough. It’s enabled us to get enough supplies for a few days, until we can get into Market Harborough.
Finally, when I went to do this post on Blogger, it’s down. So I’m typing this in Pages for the moment, and will put it up when Blogger recovers from the malign effect of the Friday the 13th.
1 comment:
Obviously it all depends on bollards being in about the right places, but just in case you haven't tried it - Take the bowline round a bollard towards the bow, but don't route it directly back to the steerer. Instead take it round 'another' bollard nearer the stern, then pass it back to the steerer. When they pull on the single rope it holds both the bow and stern in to their respective bollards. When going up it doesn't matter if the stern bollard is behind the steerer, the boat just equalises between the bollards.
HTH Davidss
Post a Comment