The pace is rising

This really is going to be a quickie, dashed off between doing one set of things and another. Main entertainment yesterday, not long after I 'd posted the blog, was a day boat that decided to go the wrong side of the warning posts on the Deeps and ran thoroughly aground.

We got them going again with a set of shouted instructions, a case of boat handling training at a distance. In the evening, we had a get to know you drink with Graham and Victoria who own Sapphire, the newest boat to be on show this weekend.

Today, we’ve met with Susan and Peter and agreed the provisional arrangement of the boats, now a total of 15 completed ones plus one in build. Some boat juggling was just getting started, moving Eleventh Heaven out of the yard and Ice Breaker in, with Sanity Again shifting one space along on the towpath, when the Ocado delivery arrived.

We managed to get the groceries on board just before untying and pulling forward. Once the goodies were stowed, we adjourned to the Trading Post for a cup of coffee/hot choc and a natter with whoever was around, including Peter and Gill on Cala who had not long arrived.

Since lunch, I’ve created some sticky label badges with the Braidbar logo on to use to identify those potential customers who have been booked in. Some more boat polishing has been done and Sheila is presently watering and feeding the garden on our roof before we go and see what we can get on with at the bungalow.

Hopefully we’ll have a quietish night tonight before the really big effort tomorrow; with the forecast for rain all day Friday, we’ll need to get the gazebos and marquee up as well as the bunting and so on.

We’re just hoping that the heavy showers predicted for Saturday turn out to be less severe than expected.

Sheila's working hard

I’m doing this post a bit early as there seems to be a bit of a lull in the proceedings…

Today I’ve walked down to the Co-op for the usual reasons and to see if the butcher nearby sold lamb’s kidneys – one of our fellow Braidbar owners wanted some and couldn’t find any. Sadly, no kidneys were available.

Back at the boat, Sheila had already washed and dried the starboard side and had started a washload. I made my contribution by polishing the navigation light. I had a go at the centre line fairlead on that side, which we’ve not been bothering with, but it’s too far gone for Peek, Tesco Cream Cleaner or good old fashioned Brasso to shift. The Brasso made the most impact, but only after very substantial effort by Sheila.

Fortunately, we’ve an Ocado delivery coming tomorrow; when updating it today, I discovered that they stock Shiny Sinks, one of the infallible ways of restoring very dull brass, so I’ve added a bottle to the order.

Since then we’ve done a bit of boat juggling (there’ll be a lot more to come, I’m sure) and pottered about a bit, not to mention nattered quite a lot. (Sheila says that this is just typical, the women do the work whilst the men gossip. I believe that the Apache had the same system, so it's quite ethnic really.)

/wahaha

The weather has stayed dull, which is a shame given that the rest of the country is supposed to be having a mini heatwave.

Ah well, can’t have everything I suppose.

Back to Poynton

This blog’s a bit late because we’ve been led astray again by our fellow boaters, many of them Braidbar owners.

/wahaha

This morning went well; we had to hang about a bit for the jewellers to open so that we could collect the wedding and engagement rings, but then made tracks for Poynton. There was still a cold wind blowing, but things have steadily improved over the course of the day.

Arriving at Poynton at half eleven, we got the diesel tank filled at the Trading Post and then pulled onto the water point to fill that tank too. Doug and James on Chance, together with their friend Olly on Queen Maeve are here for the night, and we’ve been idling the second part of the afternoon away with them, Les and Chris on Eleventh Heaven, Martin on Ice Breaker and Bill and Eileen on New Dawn, eating ice cream and drinking (soft) drinks outside the Trading Post.

Before that, though, we had a session with Susan and Peter discussing arrangements for the weekend and printing and laminating some signs for the moorings on the Deeps, explaining that we’ll be using some of them for Braidbar boats visiting the Owners’ Weekend.

My new track ball has arrived and proves to be very good; the scroll ring is particularly useful when reading web pages or navigating around long documents.

These blog posts may well be even more erratic than usual for the next week; I’ll try and post something every day but it will have to be fitted in with all the socialising and preparation work.

Shopping and a result

After a peaceful night at High Lane we made a leisurely start this morning, and chugged the short distance into Marple, taking just on an hour to do so.

There was nice time for a cup of coffee before we headed for the shops with a slightly odd shopping list in hand. On the way we stopped for a longish natter with Paul Balmer of Waterway Routes, who showed us the mapping product he’s added to his well known DVDs. Running on an Android tablet, it looked most impressive – it’s also available for any other device that will run Memory Map.

We popped into the jewellers to ask about getting Sheila’s wedding ring stretched; the actual jeweller wasn’t there, but will be tomorrow, so we’ll call in again then. Then a visit to Boots for T-gel shampoo was followed by buying a new plant trough from the superb hardware store near the Co-op.

Finally, on the way back we called into Harrods the motor trade outlet to get some more de-ionised water for battery topping up purposes; I’ve finally used up all the output from the dehumidifier.

I’ve had a reply from David Baldacchino about the rubbish at Poynton:

Thank you for your email relating to our site at Lyme Road.

 You have drawn attention to a difficulty that we have been experiencing with collections from this site in the last few weeks which has fallen well below the standard we expect  to provide.  This started when our contractor changed the organisation they used to service the site, up to that point there had been no problems.

 After the first round of difficulties the site was fully cleansed and we received assurances from our contractor that the service would then continue properly.  It became clear at the beginning of last week that this was not happening as promised.  There were further discussions with the contractor and promises that the site would be cleared again,  we were let down again over the bank holiday weekend.

 That now being the case we are requiring that this sub-contractor is removed from our contractor services and will take whatever measures are necessary under the contract to ensure that we do not suffer a financial loss – we have had to bring other contractors in now to cleanse the site and will keep doing this for as long as is necessary to ensure a proper service here.

 Our reputation is our most important asset and it is hugely important that we are seen to be managing sites like this competently.  Thankfully situations like this are, I believe, relatively rare and I hope that you can see that we are taking positive action to ensure the problem does not persist.

 I will be recording your email formally as a complaint and will write to you again with the details of that, I thought that it was important to reply to you quickly though so that you could see what we were doing.

Peter Mason tells me that the excess was indeed cleared yesterday and that the skips should be emptied today. A result, then, though I think matters were probably in hand before I emailed.

Another sunny day but a disgusting sight

It’s been another day rather like yesterday, but without the trip to the pub. We did a good bit of work first thing, polishing the port navigation light and the tiller, which last I then treated with Incralac, so that we won’t need to do it again for a few years. We also did some spring cleaning of the side berth and the locker below it in the study bedroom.

Then we got stuck into a final session of gardening before the sun got too hot. Beds were weeded out, flowered stems removed and the whole place tidied up a bit further. We’ve now filled all the bags we had for transferring severed greenery to the tip, so felt justified in knocking off.

After lunch it was indeed very warm again. It being Monday, Sheila had changed the bed this morning, so she’s been doing a series of washloads and drying them on the big whirligig in the garden.

We did some constructive loafing whilst the clothes were drying; Andy Bailey at the Trading Post has done quite well out of us as we bought first ice lollies and then drinks and ice creams as the afternoon ambled by.

Stephen and Jayne joined us in this noble endeavour, so it’s been another thoroughly pleasant day.

A good deal less pleasant is the state of the rubbish enclosure on the far side of the Trading Post. Most CRT rubbish points are well looked after; the skips might get a bit full after a weekend like this one, but otherwise they are a reasonably OK place to use.

Sadly, the contract to empty the skips here at Poynton has been very poorly enforced, with the operatives allowed to get away with leaving the area in a filthy state, failing to put the skips back where they should go and so on.

All the skips were full to overflowing this time last week, and nothing has been done to sort them out, though we’re told that CRT have been promising action for a while. As a result, this is the state of the compound today:

You can't get in even if you wanted to

We know there are rats in there

You can imagine the smell...

I’ll be emailing these photos to CRT Operations Director Vince Moran tomorrow, since the local Waterways Office doesn’t seem able to do anything; after that, I reckon it’ll be time to get Environmental Health involved.

Rest and recovery on a Sunday

As may be imagined, we’ve had a quiet time of rest and recovery, mostly, after the excitements of Sally’s stay. The day fell into three parts:

1) Waiting for the Ocado delivery, which arrived just as I’d bought hot drinks from Andy Bailey in the Trading Post.

2) Going down to the Boar’s Head for roast beef Sunday lunch with Stephen and Jayne. This was a huge success (no surprise there) as both the talk and the beef were excellent.

3) Sitting quietly on the boat. I’ve sorted the photos I took of the Mary Sunley 2 launch, done a bit of basic editing and burnt 72 of them to a CD for Susan to use as she wants.

Tomorrow, we’ll be boat shuffling to get into the yard. I expect I’ll be in a better state to blog…

/blur

Sally gives us a fright

First off, thanks to Sally for her blogs this last week, and apologies to those who don’t like her style! She’s off home now, having given us a fright last night.

Ate her tea with gusto, started in on her long chew then about half way through stopped chomping, looked around with a worried face and started giving a demo of a dog in acute distress. She was panting, pacing about, lying down for a few seconds and getting up again, hiding under the dinette and at the end of the bed against the wardrobe, you name it.

Our first thought was that she was uncomfortable internally and needed to go out. Outside, she was absolutely fine, but back indoors the whole performance started again. Checked her over; no tender areas, no lumps, limps or swellings, but nose warm and dry, ears almost hot, now panting with all of her tongue hanging out.

We got the number for the local vet from the web and rang them, but they wanted £125 even to speak to us “as she’s registered with another vet.”

We decided to hang on for a bit and took her for a long walk, when she was again fine, normal tum and all the rest of it. Back at the boat she seemed more settled as we started to get ready for bed.

It was then that Sheila had her brainwave – suppose there had been a firework display that she could hear but not us? If we had heard bangs outside her behaviour would have been entirely expected. We let her sleep with us all night, though I had to shove her out halfway through for a bit when she decided to show how much she loved me by punching me in the face with her forepaw several times.

This morning she was A1 again; local advice is that Shrigley Hall nearby often does a firework display as part of their wedding package.

Sally has been bright as a button all day; we’ve been staggering round half zonked, of course. Never mind, Sal was ecstatic to see her Mum back and they’ve headed off for home.

We’re planning a quiet afternoon and evening; we’ve an Ocado delivery in the morning and a date to go to the Boar's Head for Sunday lunch with Stephen and Jayne.

We’ll be into the yard on Monday, probably.

Dog to dog blog: some proper R&R at last

Hi Guys

Only today and tomorrow to do in this blog ‘cos hopefully Mummy is coming to rescue me again on Saturday.

We’ve had a quiet day today; managed to persuade the AGPs to take their tea back to bed in the morning so we had a good old snuggle before breakfast. Frankly I needed it after the exertions of the past few days. As it was my heart sank a bit at the thought of taking Grandpa for his walk later in the morning, but duty must be done. Mummy thinks a lot of him so I do my best to keep him fit and healthy for her.

We walked and Grandma boated to Poynton where we’ll stop until the weekend. No big deal, just a gentle walk and then after we’d moored we popped round to the yard where the boat was built to say hi to folk.

Everyone was very busy there, so didn’t stop; they’ve got a big launch of a community boat tomorrow and there was a lot of running around going on. Back at our boat we’ve had a very peaceful afternoon; Stephen and Jayne just called by for a natter.

Their boat has been having some work done but it’s almost finished off now.

I will be glad to see Mummy at the weekend. I’d been in care for a long time when she met me and there had been a few attempts at rehoming which hadn’t worked out. Like they say, I was drinking in the Last Chance Saloon when Mum took me on and straightened me out.

She really did save my life, which is why I love her more than anyone else in the whole wide world. Grandpa and Grandma are good to me, but Mum is the best.

Sorry, I’m a bit choked up so I’m going to go and lie down for a bit, until it’s teatime, in fact.

Loads of licks

Your friend

Sally

Back at Poynton for the night

Things went much to plan today, though one unexpected problem has turned up…

/floor

It was Sheila's turn to steer in the rain, so after helping her get going, I lurked below, catching up on email and the like. Whilst ensconced in the middle of this, She called me on the radio; there were a load of fence posts, big serious fence posts, between the towpath and the water, all along the stretch between bridges 3 & 4, opposite Goyt Mill. A couple of C&RT guys could be seen looking at them; are they going to fence off all that bit?

I grabbed my camera and fired off a couple of shots, but when I came to upload them to iPhoto, they wouldn't transfer. I got an error message "File format not recognised". What's more, rebooting the computer later on, it hung on the initial grey screen, very alarming.

Restarting in Safe Boot mode and repairing permissions seems to have sorted that, but the camera is continuing to play silly B's. At times, it will produce files that will upload either to my machine or Sheila's MacBook, but at others it just doesn't play. I've tried reformatting the memory card, but at the moment can't think what else to do.

Could be time for a new camera…

/hmm

All this stuff happened a bit after we got to Poynton, where we refuelled, filled the water tank and moved onto a spot on the Deeps just through the bridge. Peter has fitted the cable to our new ICC panel, and it seems to be working just fine.

Tonight, we're going to the Boar's Head with Dave and Anne Ballinger; their boat, Load of Hay, has just been in the yard having some work done. Tomorrow, we'll amble down to Adlington, then press on to Gurnett Aqueduct for Sunday and Monday nights.

Hard work but worth it

Today we have:

1. Taken the recycling to the tip
2. Had a first discussion with Peter about how many boats are going to be at the Weekend, and where they will be tied; other discussions will follow, I'm sure
3. Run a washload
4. Walked down to the Co-op for bread, paper and loo rolls
5. Eaten lunch
6. Swept, washed, waxed and polished the entire floor of Sanity Again
7. Teak oiled the saloon folding table (it's teak, you see)
8. Eaten ice lollies at the Trading Post
9. Nattered with Les, Bill and Eileen at various times
10. Moved Just Siviting onto a spare space on the Deeps - we've now got enough slots held for our minimum needs (and there's still some spaces for others to use, I'm pleased to say)
11. Sat down quietly to drink a cup of tea and read the paper
12. Stood up with a great effort to do this post (me) and the lunchtime washing up (Sheila)
13. With luck, I'll be able to find the energy to cook dinner; it's a bit early to start going down to the Boar's Head to eat.

See you tomorrow, hopefully.

Half a day, and half an hour away

In a leisurely fashion, we've set off from Poynton on our way back to Alrewas. After a relaxed start, we got the boat ready for cruising again, and pulled through the bridge onto the water point. It took around half an hour to fill half a water tank (the tap there is not the quickest); Sheila put the time to good use by getting a washload ready. Peter Mason set off for High Lane in Just Siviting whilst we were there; he had the shell for Starshine to tow after it had been craned in at North Cheshire Cruising Club. I briefly met Dave and Wendy Tarpey who are having her built.

Once the tank was reasonably full, we moved onto the shop mooring for a pump out and diesel; after just under a fortnight's use of the Hurricane, we needed 32 litres of fuel. Whilst we were manoeuvring, the phone rang with a request from Susan to see if I could improve a photo of the new hire boat, Tiree, to go on the brochure.

I couldn't manage a satisfactory job in the time available in iPhoto; it needed a lot of background cloning over, so Susan emailed it to me and I did the job properly in Photoshop Elements this afternoon.

With Sanity Again ready to cruise, we boated up to High Lane ourselves to use the winding hole, thus giving ourselves time to run the washload. Winding 70 foot there is not easy; as usual, the very end of the hole is full of mud, which makes the boat very reluctant to keep turning, but in the end we got round.

After that, it was a very pleasant potter back to Poynton and on to Adlington, where we've tied opposite Lyme View Marina. By now it was lunchtime, and the washing machine was just finishing. We'd taken all morning to do a bit less than a half hour trip from Poynton.

The afternoon has been spent quietly; the washing is drying in the sun on the whirligig, Sheila has been crocheting, and apart from my photo editing, I've been reading and dozing.

The plan is to amble down to Congleton for Monday, where we'll be joined by Peter and Jan Comline for a couple of days and the trip through Harecastle Tunnel.

Last day at Poynton

As expected, we had a great evening with Peter and Susan last night, going down to the Trattoria Tarantella in Poynton proper for an excellent meal with decent wine and just great craic. We finished up in the bungalow drinking coffee and discussing the plans for the Braidbar effort to this year's Crick Show.

The wind came up earlier than expected overnight, with the result that I was out there at four a.m. with a fleece over my jim jams, taking the flower pots and troughs off the roof and storing them in the cratch for safety. It was just starting to snow, and by the time it got light, it was doing so quite seriously, though with no chance of it lying.

We'd originally planned to shop in the morning, but since the forecast was for an improvement later in the day, we postponed it, and I again spent most of the morning in the bungalow, sorting out the iMac from the Mason's home in the way that I'd done the office one. By lunchtime, it was mostly behaving itself, though both machines are prone to dropping the WiFi connection, apparently a known problem under Lion, particularly when using a Bluetooth keyboard. The Bluetooth frequency is quite close to the 2.4 mHz used by WiFi routers.

After lunch, we walked down to Poynton and shopped at the butcher in School Lane and at Waitrose. We'd have had 30 minutes to wait for a bus back, and as the daysacks weren't too heavy we slogged it back. The Trading Post still hasn't had a delivery of kindling, but Andy had kindly made up a bag of it for us from stuff he had for himself.

After stopping to watch Peter manoeuvring Sebeq in the wind for Helga, we finally got back to Sanity Again, unloaded everything and had a well earned cup of tea.

Tomorrow, we'll diesel and pump out, then wind and set off for Lyme View in the first instance.

Gently busy day

It's been a productive day, but not at the same pitch as last week. First thing this morning I added a review of the Miners Arms to the Braidbar Owners' Group pub guide, converted the current version of the guide to a PDF and uploaded it to the files area of the group's website.

Then I ambled over to the Braidbar office and had a happy morning playing with Peter's new iMac, on the pretence of helping to set it up to use their rather elderly printer, and I downloaded Thunderbird for Mac and set that up. Sadly, it seems that Mac Mail under Mac OS Lion doesn't handle IMAP accounts terribly well, whereas Thunderbird did it effortlessly.

Getting the printer working on the Mac meant their old Windows XP machine now couldn't see it, but fortunately that's not mission critical. As always, getting Macs and Windows machines to interface across a network wasn't straightforward, again especially with Lion, whereas it was much easier with Snow Leopard.

(And for any Mac heads out there, yes I tried the Bonjour Printer server on the Windows box, and it still didn't help. No doubt eventually it all could have been persuaded to work, but since Peter's buying a snazzy new Samsung MFP with wireless connectivity, there just wasn't much point slogging on with it.)

I have to say, having had two good sessions with it now, I'm not at all convinced the move to Lion (ie 10.7 rather than 10.6) was worth it. It has more bells and whistles, but mostly silly ones like calling the application chooser "Launchpad". For all basic functions, like email, web browsing and running Office, it doesn't seem any better. It looks like Apple are succumbing to that perennial temptation for software designers, bloat. I certainly don't want to upgrade our machines from Snow Leopard.

Meantime, whilst I was enjoying myself, Sheila slogged down to the Co-op for bread and a paper, what a wonderful wife.

This afternoon we've spent quietly in the boat, watching an unusual sight; the rain running down the windows.

Tonight, we go out for a meal with Peter and Susan, which is a very nice thought indeed.

/please

Very pleasant day after a late night

We had another great night with Chris and Les last evening, with loads of talk and jokes and a good sampling of whiskies. We didn't get to bed until gone one o'clock, so had a lie in this morning; the weather wasn't encouraging anyway.

When we did stagger up, I lit the fire to keep the damp out. We pottered across to the yard, where Eleventh Heaven was on the water point preparatory to a final visit for an oil change. After a chat with Peter and Susan, we collected the cratch wings, and popped them back on. They look very much better for the fresh varnish.

Having got changed into respectable looking clothes, we wandered back to the yard and met up with Peter and Jan. The Miners Arms had some bad press last year, but today it seemed back to the way we've always known it, with good food, though from a shorter menu than formerly, and an interesting range of hand pulled ales. There are only two lagers on draft, though.

Back at the boat, we had a coffee and made plans to meet Peter and Jan again next week, when they'll join us for the trip through Harecastle Tunnel.

As may be imagined, we've been pretty quiet since they left; it'll be an early night tonight.

Lazy(ish) Sunday

We had a bit of a lie-in this morning, not surfacing properly until gone eight, and then loafing in bed swigging tea for another twenty minutes or so. We finally staggered into the air, and pottered about for most of the rest of the morning.

Sheila did the month-end banking, and after a bit we stirred ourselves to test out the carnauba wax polish. Regular readers may recall we've decided to give it a try instead of the Mer we've used for the last eight years (mainly because in our early days on Sanity, Halfords had a special offer on a big container of the stuff and we've still not quite finished it).

The main concern that we had was that another Braidbar boat switched in this way and the whole surface of the paint went milky; in the end the boat had to be completely repainted. So what we've done is to wash the stern bulkhead with Craftmaster boat wash, then polish it with Craftmaster carnauba. That way, if disaster strikes, we'll just have the one bulkhead to repaint.

In the event, it's all gone very well, and we're very taken with the polish. It applied much more easily than Mer, in that although it needs hard rubbing to put on, it removed a lot of oxidised paint and stuff, and polishes off much more readily. One of the things that we particularly disliked about Mer was how hard it was to get a decent, swirl free finish.

We'll leave it for a while, and once back in Mercia, assuming all is still well, we'll work our way round the rest of the outside of the boat.

After lunch, we were asked to show a couple of prospective owners, Sue and Tony, round both Sanity Again and Islay. There had been some misunderstanding about when boats were available to see, and they'd turned up unexpectedly. Chris and Les gave them a tour of Eleventh Heaven, which happened to be on the shop mooring getting diesel, then we took them over and did the rounds of the two boats on the Deeps (Islay is tied right behind us).

They seemed a very nice couple, though with limited boating experience, so they've gone off planning to arrange a hire of Tiree this year before taking the plunge.

Once all that was done, we took ourselves for a walk up into Lyme Park and back down to Bridge 16, and so back along the towpath. We've had a quiet cup of tea, preparatory to showering and doing this blog. Pork chops tonight, then a visit to Eleventh Heaven to sample some malts; I'm taking some Horlicks as a contribution myself.

/wahaha

Relaxing on the Deeps

After the buzz of the past couple of days, we've been taking it a bit easier today.Yesterday saw us having another great time, but it did get quite wearing. We started the day by doing a bit of touching-in on the varnish on the cratch board; we haven't done a complete revarnish as we have for the wings, but just covered the areas where the sun had begun to damage the finish. Next year, we'll probably go the whole hog, masking off the various fittings and completely revarnishing both the wings and the rigid part of the board.

Peter replaced a broken cabin hook for the stern doors, and I refixed the fire extinguisher holder in the engine room. That completed the work to Sanity Again, except that we can't replace the cratch wings until the varnish on the board has dried hard.

After lunch we began shuffling boats, with a cunningly worked out series of moves that never left one of the spaces we needed out on the towpath empty.  A total of four boat movements ended with Sanity Again back on the Deeps just through Bridge 15, Emerald II on the hire boat mooring, Tiree having gone out for the week, Eleventh Heaven back on her temporary mooring in Victoria Pit and Bunnies Warren in the yard ready for her snagging work next week.

There's still Emerald II to move onto her temporary mooring on Victoria Pit before she leaves to go to her home mooring, and Islay, presently sitting behind us on the Deeps, will take up a permanent mooring in Victoria Pit.

I finished the day giving Peter a tutorial on file and folder management on his new Mac machines (he's got a pair of big iMacs, one for the office and one for home – what a wise man). In the evening, Graham and Beryl from Priscilla came round for a drink, having been to the Braidbar Owners' Group clubhouse, aka the Boars Head, for dinner.

Our plans for next week are to have lunch with Peter and Jan, Sheila's brother and sister-in-law, on Monday; we're going to try the Miners Arms at Adlington again. It changed hands last September, so we'll be able to do an entry for the Braidbar Owners' Pub Guide afterwards. On Tuesday we're dining with Peter and Susan Mason, then we'll set off for Alrewas and Mercia on Wednesday. Probably.

Today, I went down to Poynton, walking down and bussing back. I got some fresh supplies, and had a prescription made up. Oh, and I bought a paper.

/wahaha

This afternoon, I've been doing entries to the aforesaid pub guide from the notes we made on the way up here, and we've been tackling the Indy Giant General Knowledge Crossword, with a bit more success than usual. I'm not sure what's happening tonight; Chris and Les are heading this way to take up residence on Eleventh Heaven, but we haven't seen any sign of them yet.

/nobigdeal

Very busy again

It's been another amazingly busy and fulfilling day, finishing off the stuff we've had done on Sanity Again and then juggling boats around this afternoon, then teaching Peter some stuff about his new iMacs.

It's late, I'm tired, but am determined to cook dinner tonight and not retreat to the pub yet again. Graham and Beryl off Priscilla are coming round for a drink later, though, after they've been to the pub…

/blur

So I'm going to leave it at that today, and will try and do a two day bog tomorrow.

Summer already?

We had an excellent evening on Eleventh Heaven trying to drink Chris and Lesley out of booze last night. We didn't quite succeed, but it was a good way to hurtle into British Summer Time.

/wahaha

Today the weather has been ridiculously summery, more like May than March; shades of last April. It gave us a good excuse to take things fairly easy after our exertions excesses, though another washload got run, and Chris and Les kindly gave Sheila a lift round half the local garden centres in pursuit of plants for the troughs for the roof.

She returned with a patriotic collection; blue mini surfinias, white pansies and red begonias, together with some mint, thyme and coriander plants which are my price for letting her put anything growing on the roof at all. When the weather settles to being frost free, we'll also plant up some basil.

I helped with the planting process in the sense that I collected buckets of water from the tap and took the detritus away afterwards. I also strolled down to the council tip with our recycling.

Apart from that, it's just been a very dozy sort of day. The North Cheshire Cruising Club cruised past in the morning and back again this afternoon, but we just sat and watched them.

Despite our best intentions, we're going to eat in the Boars Head tonight, though we've agreed with the Herriotts that it can't be such a late night this time, as at least some of our boats are due to go into the yard tomorrow.

If we're late up in the morning, there will knocking on the roof at eight, but of course if we're ready to go at seven, it'll probably be the afternoon before there's any movement…

/dignose

Getting back to normal

Although Bunnies Warren is very, very comfortable, it was great to get back to our own bed last night, and not to have to get up first thing this morning. This didn't stop us waking early, of course, but we were able to lie in whilst drinking the first cup of tea.

Then we set to getting our lives back to normal, running another washload, waiting for the Ocado delivery, sweeping and washing the well deck. The delivery turned up at half ten, and was soon aboard; it's just a top up, really, mainly the perishable stuff that had been used up before we left the boat.

I then walked down to the first Co-op in Poynton to get a paper (Ocado doesn't do papers) and I picked up a roasted chicken for tonight. The weather has continued very warm and sunny, so it feels more like late spring than late March.

Helga off Sebeq is across here from Germany, and she called in for tea and catching up this afternoon. Whilst she was with us, we saw Eleventh Heaven coming back from a day trip, and we've been invited over there for a drink later. For the first time for a fortnight we're going to eat on board.

I've been catching up with various computing jobs, mainly record keeping for this boat. Over the next few days I've got a set of other things to do, but it's quite hard to get on with them with the sun shining down out there.

In another sign of the turn of the year, I emptied out the upper bow locker, got out Sheila's pots and troughs from the lower locker, and put the coal box away when I reloaded the upper one. This means that we have the use of the folding chairs on the bow again, and very pleasant it is too.

Mission accomplished

After another good meal in the Fool's Nook last night, we made our earliest start yet this morning, and were underway not long after half six. That meant that we got to Poynton by half ten, finding the yard abuzz as always on the day a new boat is due to be handed over.

Many congratulations to Stewart and Margaret, proud new owners of Emerald 2; we hope you will be as pleased and happy with her as we've been first with Sanity and then Sanity Again.

We've spent the afternoon moving stuff from Bunnies Warren to Sanity Again, getting a washload on, getting Sanity Again pumped out and fuelled and all the rest of it, and we're quite incredibly tired.

So we're going to sit on the bow in the sun with some beverages and get emotional too.

I'll hopefully be more coherent tomorrow…

/blur

PS: don't worry, Ian and Sharon, your baby is all in one bit and looking very nearly as good as when you handed her over to us; we'll get her cleaned up during the weekend!

/sweat