... and so to Poynton

Today has gone according to plan, so far at least. We had a relaxed start as Elanor's train was not until 10.56 at Macclesfield and it's about an hour's cruise from Lyme Green to there. So we got away just before nine and were tied on the spiffing new pontoon moorings by Buxton Road before ten.

Elanor left us at twenty past, Sally staring after her with her Hang On expression on her face. It being my turn to steer, I had to bundle up well as there was a bitter North Wind blowing. You can tell we've come north and ascended about 600 feet; it's still winter in these parts!

We took it in turns to steer, half an hour on and half off, with plenty of hot drinks. Lunch was taken on the move and we got to Poynton after a total of four hours boating, almost exactly what we'd estimated. An exchange of texts with Elanor confirmed that she too had arrived at the marina, having taken two hours by train, including two changes, to retrace eight days boating...

She's now driving back and should be here by five. We've been to the Trading Post for tea and flapjack, much to Sally's disgust as she didn't get any. Mind you, she was very well behaved, sitting between us outside the TP and watching the world go by. She is indeed a changed dog from all those years ago when she was nervy and had a hair trigger threat response.

Tonight, the plan is for a meal in the Boar's Head, yum.

Blimey, it's Bollington

A lazy start this morning, as we only had a couple of hours to boat to Bollington, where they've sorted the broken down towpath wall by the Adelphi Mill and reinstated the visitor moorings there. Setting off at half seven we got to the Swetenham Street CRT yard and water point a bit after eight. Having started the tank filling, I got the washing machine going as well, the water having heated up enough to make it worthwhile.

Sheila then steered all the way to Bollington in a steadily increasing wind. It was just starting to get troublesome when we got here – we've since had to move the plant troughs off the roof into the well deck to stop them from blowing over. The tall side of the mill exacerbates the situation, of course.

I took some photos of the swanky new VMs in Macc:

They are limited to 3 days stay, an unusual length which makes one wonder what the reason was for them.

After lunch, we walked down into the village to visit the Co-op and a butcher (Bollington has three). The Co-op has moved up the road a ways and is now much bigger. It even has self check out tills, would you believe, the first time we've seen them in a Co-op, I reckon.

We're going to stop here tomorrow, partly because it's forecast to rain, partly because we don't want to get to Poynton before Monday and partly because it's a different place to meet up with Sheila's brother and sister-in-law for lunch. We plan to try out The Vale, which has an interesting review in the BOG Pub Guide. I'll let you know what we thought of it in due course...

 

 

Last day at Lyme Green

The weather has finally started to moderate, and we've taken advantage of that fact to get some serious retail therapy in. This morning we went to the retail park and got pretty well everything we were looking for, a distinct result.

Matalan, Homebase, and Poundstretcher all came up tops. We went into Curry's as well, as we wanted to suss out pocket point-and-shoot type cameras for Sheila, and I wanted to pick up a spare USB-A to USB-micro lead, as I'm down to my last one.

They had a good range of cameras, and we had a play with the Panasonic Lumix FS30 which seems to be the kind of thing she's after. What they didn't have was the USB lead, which I then found in Poundstretcher for two quid.

After lunch, we took the bus into town (it's all of six minutes) and raided the baker's, a butcher in the market, banked some cheques and went to Tesco. Oh, and I bought a paper from Smith's, though they didn't have the puzzle book Sheila wanted. The good folk of Macclesfield aren't into the kind of Super Hanji mind bending she goes in for, presumably.

Back at the boat a couple of hours later, we put it all away and had a cup of tea.

Tomorrow, we'll make an early start; no lie-in for me, there's a swing bridge to work. Mind you, if I get up it will be swung open, and if I lie in bed it'll be closed, Sod's Law being what it is.

Heigh ho, it's a hard life…

/sweat

NOT

/wahaha

Lyme Green to Lyme View

It's been one of those days where things went pretty well to plan (Hannibal Smith would be pleased), although the weather was a shade damp first thing. In fact it misted down for much of the first part of the trip, but there was no wind, and it stayed mild, so not a big deal.

We set off from Lyme Green just before eight, and I steered through to the water point in Macc, taking about 40 minutes for the section, there being quite a few moored boats on the way. Tying at the water point is always a bit tricky; I've said before that Macclesfield needs to do something about its canalside. If you leave the engine running even for a moment, a guy emerges from one of the houses to complain. His problem, apart from anger management issues, is that the curved washwall means that the bottom edge of the boat rests on the stone wall, and transmits your engine noise straight into the basement of his house.

It being still quite early on a Sunday, I switched off as soon as Sheila had taken the centre line. The curve on the washwall also means that you can't get very close to the side, so a fair bit of jumping on and off is required until you're moored.

The water pressure, however, is very good, and we didn't take too long to fill well over half a tank. Meanwhile, I went and got a paper and some more houmous. Setting off again, I did what I hardly ever do, and let go all lines before starting the engine. This is, of course, asking for the engine to fail to fire, but not on this occasion.

Sheila ran a washload as we went along, and did various boat-keeping jobs, including rearranging the bookshelves in the saloon, which are now much better organised.

After that, it was  a case of a steady plod in steadily improving weather through Bollington and Riley Green to arrive at Adlington and the Lyme View marina just before lunch. We've had a relaxing afternoon; the bed sheet is on the whirligig, other stuff is drying inside, and we've been reading in the well deck.

Tomorrow, we'll do the last twenty minutes or so into Poynton, where our Ocado delivery will hopefully arrive between two and three, and we'll make contact with Peter, Susan, and some of the owners who are already working on getting the place sorted for next weekend.

As usual, this blog may become a bit more erratic for a week or so; I'll try and get something posted every day, but can't promise. If not, I'll pop up a tweet to let folk know what's happening – it'll appear in the panel over there on the right ---->

Quiet Sunday, busy Monday

25th & 26th October

Yesterday was the day for which the motto is “fall back”. In our case we took that to mean “fall back into bed” and had an even lazier start than usual. After we’d eventually got up, I ambled down to the paper shop for an Independent on Sunday. On my way back, I met Graham and Beryl Johnson just setting off on a similar expedition.

We had a bit of a natter; Graham confirmed that he is willing to come and take photos of Sanity Again’s shell being craned in, and he has even offered to go to Tim Tyler’s yard first thing in the morning and take some shots of it being loaded onto the trombo.

Truly, Braidbar owners are a great bunch.

The rest of the morning was spent in a laid back fashion. Sheila has taken over the iBook as her personal machine, and has gone back to doing some proof reading for Project Gutenberg Canada. I found that Amazon are selling HP colour cartridges quite cheap and, having ordered one, took the opportunity to sort out my wish list in anticipation of Christmas.

As Graeme commented (note the spelling; we are talking now about the son, not the owner of Priscilla), it seems a bit early, but last year when I left it later I was told that people had already decided what to get me.

After lunch we took ourselves out for a short walk. Fortunately I had remembered to put the phone in my pocket for once as we had calls from both Elanor and Graeme whilst we were out. Sheila also popped into the Trading Post to buy a bottle of meths, having to endure only a couple of jokes along the lines of “Don’t drink it all at once” in so doing.

She actually wanted it for cleaning both the keyboard of the iBook and the Bluetooth keyboard that we use with it. This proved extremely successful and a good deal cheaper than buying branded keyboard cleaner.

This morning we managed an early start and by eight o’ clock we were manoeuvring Sanity out of the mooring. The cunning plan was to use the centre line and stern line to get her in the right position to pivot round. It would have worked except that, as I suspected, all the running the engine in gear had created a reef of silt halfway down the boat. Our manipulation meant that the stern was sitting nicely on this reef when Sheila came to drive out.

She used the short shaft to nudge the stern across and then for once it was a case of piling the power on to dredge our way out.

After watering, we set off for Macclesfield. I think I’ve commented earlier on the number of Jays around this year and we saw yet more all over the place this morning. We also saw a great many dead leaves, and it took about three and a half hours to get to Gurnett Aqueduct, so often did Sheila have to chuck back to clear the prop.

In addition, it being half term, there are lots of hire boats about, many of them puzzled as to the problems they keep having with maintaining drive. I don’t know if the hire yards warn them about the affinity waterlogged leaves have for a turning prop, but they certainly should.

No matter, we were at Gurnett just in nice time for lunch, after which we walked into Macclesfield for me to order some new specs, now that I am eligible for the 30% discount for the over sixties.

On the way back, we had to repass some mini road works which were just starting when we were walking out. They’d just stopped as we got back there; it seems that the water main had been a bit closer to the surface than expected, as a thirty foot high fountain was now emerging from the excavation.

We’re planning a quiet evening; we may stay put tomorrow or else head back to Poynton. It all depends on the weather.

Things are looking up

7th & 8th October

Yesterday was another day for a relaxed start; Sheila had a hair appointment for 10 o’clock, and left to walk down to the hairdresser’s at half nine. For quite a while now I have been endeavouring to cut her hair myself (fortunately she likes a simple style) but since we are to be in one place for some months it seemed like a good idea for her to have several professional cuts and undo some of the damage.

Whilst she was out, I pottered about doing this and that on the boat, tidying it and cleaning in readiness for entertaining Iain and Luisa Bryceland yesterday evening. By the time Sheila returned, the boat was looking quite smart and tidy. I make this remark not in a spirit of self congratulation (much) but to underline the irony of the phone call from Susan Mason just after lunch.

This was to say that the monitor, keyboard and trackball had arrived. My initial reaction was to resist the temptation to dash over there, but Sheila pointed out it was a bit unfair to the Masons to leave two large boxes cluttering up their office. Accordingly, we went and collected them.

Back at the boat, the aura of tidiness was soon dispelled. I haven’t set up a new computer for some years, though it was a routine task in my last job before retirement. I had forgotten quite how much mess all the weird bits of packaging and polystyrene create, especially in a small space.

Needless to say, the rest of the afternoon was taken up with commissioning the Mac Mini. It’s a bit anxiety provoking at first, but once the main data folders had been transferred from the iBook (by restoring the backup I had made the day before) and the T Mobile USB modem installed and connecting to the internet I was able to relax and enjoy playing with my new toy.

There’s still a fair bit to do installing various applications I’ve downloaded from the internet over the years, but we do now have a functioning computer that is much faster than the old one. The main outstanding problem is that the fancy new word processor, Pages, and spreadsheet, Numbers, are refusing to import Office documents in the way that they should. Instead they fall over complaining of a problem with the SFCompatibility plug in. I haven’t yet had time to investigate the cause of this.

I finally tore myself away from it to have a shower and start cooking dinner. We had our usual excellent time with Iain and Luisa. Their tales of their early struggles in setting up Braidbar Boat Services are in equal parts hilarious and horrifying. They also put in an effective plea for Tim Tyler; they made the point that he will be mortified to be so late with the shell. They’ve offered to arrange for us to go over to Sheffield and see the shell in build which would be fun as we didn’t get a chance to see Sanity’s until it was delivered to Braidbar.

Despite the late night, we managed to get up in time to be boating at quarter past eight, as we wanted to come back down to Macclesfield to collect Sheila’s specs which Boots had got ready earlier than expected. As we were setting off we had a discussion about when the toilet tank would need pumping out. It’s just over two weeks since our encounter with Mr Gale at the top of Bosley, but the amber light had not yet come on on the gauge, so it looked as if we might get through the weekend before needing to do it.

We were steadily under way with me steering when Sheila appeared at the back and said cheerfully “Houston, we have a problem”. The red light had just come on on the tank gauge indicating that it was absolutely full. This told us three things:

• We hadn’t managed to pump out as much rinse water as we’d thought when Mr Gale descended on us;
• The float switch halfway up the tank has stuck again;
• Any further use of the toilet would result in an undesirable discharge overside.

There was a brief period of frantic cogitation before Sheila remembered that the yard at Bollington Wharf does pump outs. We’ve never stopped there before because it’s normally guarded by a Rottweiler. It’s a very cheerful looking Rottweiler but of course it would probably continue to look cheerful whilst tearing you limb from limb. No matter, needs must when the devil drives or the toilet tank is full.

It was a little tricky getting on to the mooring, but we then discovered that the owner and Rottweiler were away for the week and service was provided by a nice old bloke and a West Highland White Terrier. He proceeded to do a very good pump out, whilst regaling us with towpath gossip.

After setting off once more, Sheila set out to make a coffee for us both but discovered that the gas cylinder was empty. It only took a moment to switch over; at least it hadn’t happened whilst cooking last night.

Sheila hopped off the boat as we came through the bridge by the waterpoint and nipped up to the Co-op for bread and a paper whilst I boated slowly on. She caught up two bridges later and we’ve come through to our usual mooring on Gurnett Aqueduct.

We’ve had a successful trip into town and we’re treating ourselves to an M & S meal for two for £10 tonight to give me a break after my endeavours last night. Tomorrow we’ll head back to Poynton for a lunch on Saturday with Peter and Jan, Sheila’s brother and sister in law.

To Macclesfield and back

1st & 2nd October

We had a good night's sleep on our new mooring, despite the slight lean caused by the fact that we were sitting on the silt. We made a prompt start and Sheila reversed Sanity off the mud. She came free without too much trouble but there is only just room to swing the stern round in the Marple direction to get her clear of the concrete edge.

We boated down to the water point and filled the tank, then set off for Macclesfield. It was a pleasant autumn morning but quite chilly. The pound is still very low making it hard work to get through each of the many bridge holes. After almost every one, a cloud of black sodden leaves can be seen in the wake and it is necessary to chuck back to throw their little friends away from the propeller.

It all made for a slowish run. I must admit that I left Sheila to get on with it for much of the time and stayed below checking e-mail and uploading the latest version of the definitive list of Braidbar boats to the files area of the Braidbar Owners' Group on Yahoo.

The main breaks for me in this activity were feeding Sheila a mug of coffee and responding to her call "Bow please!" When I went out there, there was the corner of a pallet visible above the surface of the water up ahead. Since we are rather short of kindling at the moment, this was a welcome sight.

Recovering it was a bit more of a struggle than usual. As I leant out and got hold of it with the boathook, Sheila brought Sanity to a dead stop. The pallet proved to be tied to a metal gate with some bailer twine, so, whilst holding the pallet in one hand to prevent it getting away, I had to remove my trusty Swiss Army knife from my pocket with the other. And then open it.

Eventually, however, the beast was hauled on board and stood on its end in the well deck to drain.

We got to Macclesfield after about three and a half hours and moored on Gurnett Aqueduct bow to bow with Stewart Hooper's working boat Annie. There was no sign of Stewart so we couldn't buy coal from him then.

After lunch we trekked down into Macclesfield and had a successful session buying socks for me and ordering new spectacles for Sheila. (I'm due some new specs too, but they're doing a thirty percent discount for the over sixties, so I'm going to wait until later in the month before getting mine.)

On our way back we found that Priscilla had also tied on the aqueduct, so we stopped for a chat with them before returning to Sanity for a quiet evening. You can tell that summer is definitely over; we've started unrolling the cratch cover to keep the boat warmer in the evenings.

This morning we were getting ready for another early start when we saw Stewart pottering on his boat. This is the first time we've seen him for a year, so it was necessary to have a long chat preparatory to buying ten bags of Excel from him.

Then it was on our way, first down to the winding hole at Lyme Green, then back to the visitor mooring by the water point opposite the Hovis mill. We tied there and walked down to Tesco to get some fresh supplies, mostly greengroceries.

After a well earned cup of coffee, I steered back towards Poynton. The pound has come back by about an inch, and the fact that I was following Annie (she draws three feet) made things easier in the bridge holes.

It was gone twelve when we reached Bollington so we tied opposite the Wharf for lunch, running a washload at the same time. We finally got back to Poynton just on three o' clock, and stopped on the water point again to replace the water that the washing had used, so that we won't need to come off the mooring during the weekend.

I nipped into the yard and saw Susan Mason, who had three packages for me. One was the VHF antenna which I've left there until Peter and I can check it out together. The others were a Bluetooth speaker phone as an alternative to the Bluetooth earpiece for the mobile phone, and the cantilever mount for the computer monitor.

We've got back onto our mooring slightly more easily coming in the other direction, and I think we've got a little closer to the edge of the wharf despite having an extra quarter tonne of coal on the roof.

We're planning a fairly quiet weekend, since the weather is scheduled to be a bit wild and windy. I must admit it is nice in these circumstances to be on a bona fide mooring of our own and to go or stay just as we please.

Busy busy at Poynton

23rd & 24th September

We've made it to Poynton, and are now in the throes of getting both Sanity and the yard ready for the Open Day on Saturday. Lots of other Braidbar Owners are arriving to join us, so it looks like being a good weekend.

Yesterday's trip was pretty uneventful, though the Macc is well down up here, around four inches off, which is a lot for a canal that's pretty shallow at the best of times.

We'll be run off our feet, or else socializing, for the next few days, so I won't try to post anything until Monday. After that, there'll be more activity on the Building Sanity Again blog, I expect, but I'll keep folks posted about that next week.

Meanwhile, Nick Wilde calls me to account on the subject of the equinox (he's a master mariner, and knows about these things).

Here's what he said:

In the latest [blog] you put, "...since it is the equinox and the sun rises at six o' clock GMT, that is seven o' clock BST, it could be said to have been a crack of dawn ..."
Oops! Sorry Bruce, two mistakes there.

First: We are all supposed to have stopped using GMT when we changed to UT in 1972 (yes, really, that long ago!) - then the PC brigade changed British Summer Time to Daylight Saving Time, so 06:00 UT = 07:00 DST.

Second: The equinox doesn't mean that the sun rises at 06:00 - today it rose at 05:49 (05:46 in Macclesfield). I'm afraid that is common misconception. Equinox is a term used to describe the moment when the earth's tilt with respect to the sun is zero. In theory, at the equinox, a person at the equator should be able to observe the sun vertically overhead at noon. But that very rarely occurs. So, for somewhere up the Macclesfield Canal (or anywhere else for that matter) there are two (major) buggerance factors preventing sunrise from occurring 'bang on' 06:00. The first is latitude, the further north you are the earlier the sun rises - in summer that is. The other major factor is that we haven't quite got our earth to rotate in its annual orbit at a uniform yet. New Labour have promised that by the next election it will, however, I don't believe their hype. I prefer to continue to believe that which navigators have long believed, that we must also take account of the equation of time.

I replied:

I dunno, everyone's a critic ;-}}}

Thank you for reminding me about these matters so lucidly. I did actually realise that sunrise wouldn't be smack on 0600, but for the purposes of the argument I don't think the odd 10 or 15 minutes matters, this is canal boating, not circumnavigating the globe!

Similarly, whilst you are absolutely correct about the whole GMT/UT(C)/BST/DST thing, I'm not sure many of my readers would have understood modern usage, but you may well be right. I'll pop your observations into my next post, I think, and we'll see what response we get.

See you next week!

Towing a shell to Poynton

12th & 13th December

In view of the changed arrangements for the tow (i.e. not now happening until tomorrow) we were able to have a lie in, and then the prospect of a day to potter about.

I wanted to do some minor jobs around the boat, so I put the drill battery on charge whilst we made the long walk from Gurnett Aqueduct to Tesco. We’d normally access Tesco from the water point mooring (aka dog poo mooring) but didn’t want to boat up there on this day, as it’s quite noisy at night. Anyway there’s only the one decently deep length of mooring there and it had a boat on it when we passed the day before.

So we made a good walk of it, along the towpath back to aforesaid water point and then down Buxton Road, right into Fence Road and then across the park towards Tesco. Shopping done (two wine boxes in anticipation of the festive season, mainly) we trekked back in time for lunch.

In the afternoon I made a modification to the gas locker lid. When we first had the boat, there was a little wooden block on the foredeck which stopped the lid closing completely, so as to ensure good ventilation through the locker. Over time this broke up and disappeared, and Mike Carter had been unhappy that the lid now closed down tight when he did our boat safety examination.

He’d suggested drilling a hole through the deck and fixing a bolt through it such that it kept the lid a little open as before. I didn’t fancy the effect of the bolt head on the underside of the lid without some sort of padding, so I got a small piece of half inch reinforced water hose, drilled a hole through one side of it, and fixed the bolt through that, the other side of the hose thus protecting the bolt head.

The main effort involved was drilling through the deck, but by using my sharpest bits, and working up in 5 mm stages I did it at last. It’s good to know that the steel of which Sanity is constructed is so tough!

The other jobs were to fix the new smoke alarm to the ceiling of the study bedroom, and to mount, finally, the plaque we got for attending the Huddlesford Boat Gathering on the bulkhead we use for our collection of such things.

Yesterday dawned bright and cold, with just a thin skin of ice on the water here and there. The shell we were to tow was not expected to be put into the water until one o’clock, so we had another lazy start, and pottered about in the boat until half eleven, then made and ate an early lunch and boated round to the marina for one.

The shell was already there, with Iain and Peter working on the main job that must be done before launch, namely fixing the prop shaft and prop through the stern post. Peter announced that if we were planning to take the tow all the way to Poynton that day, he could come with us to help with the fending off and take his turn at steering. This was welcome news, as a third hand does make a difference to the job. Since the boat is a spec boat, there was no eager pair of future owners there to help.

Just as we were beginning to wonder about it, the crane turned up, and without too much further ado, the shell was lifted off the lorry and placed in the water. Iain and Peter shafted her out of the marina moorings as I reversed Sanity towards her. Iain then fixed the tow with cross straps.

This is the traditional way of close coupling an unpowered boat (normally the butty in the carrying days) to the motor boat. The line goes from the T-stud on the bow of the tow, round one side of its stem and fastens to the opposite dolly on the motor’s stern. It’s then taken back to the T-stud and round the other side of the stem to cross over to the other dolly.

This makes a sort of articulated tow, the towed boat’s bow tending to follow the stern of the motor very closely, so that the steerer of the tow only has to worry about keeping its stern following on. An empty shell makes a tricky sort of beast – unballasted, it floats high in the water, with not a lot of its rudder submerged. A rudder intended for a powered boat isn’t as effective without a prop wash passing it anyway, so it can be hard work making the tow go where you want it.

Fortunately, there was very little wind yesterday – we’ve done some tows for Braidbar in wet and windy conditions that made it very hard work indeed for the person on the back of the tow. As it was, it was a glorious day for boating, and we set of in fine style, only stopping briefly after the first, immediate bridge 'ole for Peter to nip back and get the tiller for the tow. (Ooops)

The Macc bridge 'oles are quite tight for a normal boat, so it's an interesting test of the motor steerer’s skill to get the whole thing through without too much bashing of the shell on the sides, or, heaven forfend, the arch of the 'ole. The trick is to slow down for the bridge in good time, and then wind her up as you get close to the 'ole. That way you have lots of steerage without going too fast.

By the time we reached Poynton it was getting quite dark, and I had the tunnel light on on Sanity to see my way through the bridges. This didn’t help Sheila on the tow, of course, and Peter earned his keep hopping off at each bridge and applying firm guidance to the shell as it passed though the 'ole. (He’s good at firm guidance, Peter is).

Arriving at the yard, we moored Sanity on the shop mooring, and put the shell outside her for the night. It was now gone five, and quite cold, so we were glad to go into the house for a cup of tea.

Then it was back to the boat for Sheila to take a shower, me to do a holding post on here, and then we treated ourselves to a meal at the Boar’s Head just down the road, not to mention some well earned pints of Black Sheep and Kronenbourg.

Boating again

Friday 2 March

Spent the morning watering, talking to Luisa Bryceland and Ian Grindrod about ways of installing an electric pump out facility, and then pulling out of the yard to get a pump out.

Having done this, winded at the end of the moorings ( a bit tricky in a gusty wind) and then went just a short way towards Bollington before stopping for lunch, it then being about 12.45. We did some internet research on the electric pump out question, without really finding any firm answers, and then boated on to Bollington aqueduct for the night.

The new connector for our Nokia 6234 to the aerial seems to work OK - it's attached by a piece of Velcro to the back of the phone over the internal aerial, so it doesn't feel as secure as the plug in ones. We shall have to see how it performs over time, I guess.

Tomorrow it's on to Macclesfield for the Save Our Waterways protest against funding cuts for British Waterways.