Fat Ropes. 6th May

Braunston Lock 2 to Brockhall Road Bridge

A drizzly kind of day, grey, quite disappointing compared to the last couple, but at least the wind had died down.

Mick walked up to the village for our Saturday paper whilst I made my way along the towpath on my crutches. If I know I’m going to walk a distance at the moment I use them, otherwise I go solo hobbling along. We met at Butchers Bridge, the walk over the ornate bridge at the marina entrance was considerably easier than it had been the last time we were here, followed by the convoluted way over dry dock bridges to get to Tradline.

At the moment you can buy a full set of 14mm ropes from them for £55, this includes bow, stern, centre line and a soft shackle. Jan yesterday had shown us their soft shackle which we’d not seen before. Tyler Wilson shells have a small loop on the roof to attach a centre line to. We tend to have two lines attached here and Mick had cobbled a means of attaching our ropes for the time being. The soft shackle will make this much easier. They are clever things tightening under weight but incredibly easy to undo when at ease.

Looking at the 14mm rope it still seemed a bit thin compared to our old ropes so we decided to go thicker still to 16mm. Then a choice of black, blue or hemp. We opted for blue which the lady would have to make up for us. So instead of watching we walked back to Wharf House Chandlers so I could check on how long it would take to order some touch up paint and get a new tin of Multiforte, with the hope that I’ll keep the gunnels touched up as we go. Touch up paint would be between 24hours and a week to come in, shame I hadn’t rung last week.

Mick collected the ropes and we were ready to set sail for London. In the pound where we were there is a slight indentation which made us wonder if we’d be able to wind there instead of going down the remaining two locks to the marina entrance only to come back again. But an enquiry on facebook came back with a no, so we didn’t even try. As we were about to pull out a boat was just mooring behind us for lunch, they had been sharing the locks with NB Hakuna Matata, so we swapped places with them and shared the last two of the flight.

It seemed daft for me to get back on Oleanna, only to hop off again when we’d winded and returned so I stood on the crest of the bridge and watched what started out as a quiet scene. Mick gradually disappeared under Butchers Bridge towards the marina entrance where he wanted to wind. From my view point I could see two hire boats pulling out, one reversing, another boat waited for them to wind before coming through the bridge. Out of sight boats appeared from every direction as Mick reached the marina entrance. One boat sat waiting for boats to go past before pulling out, this blocked Micks way and therefore holding up boats behind, others came from Braunston Turn holding everything up too. Eventually Mick managed to get the nose of Oleanna into the marina and winded, the hire boats followed, one chap had definitely seen bunnies and panicked bumping into a following boat.

Back at the lock two boats arrived and it would have been churlish not to have opened the gates for them. The first boat in the lock was a single handing lady we’d come across on the River Soar a couple of weeks ago, I suspect we’ll play leap frog with her if we don’t end up sharing locks. Then NB Grace and Oleanna came into view, lock reset and we were on our way back up. Denise and Colin (hope I’ve remembered your names right) had brother Bob with them who was under tuition. We managed to have a very jolly chat as we worked our way up the six locks. They are also heading to London, not sure if our cruising pace will be similar, but if it is the locks will fly by.

Originally they had thought of stopping before the tunnel, but instead decided to follow us through as we were ‘seasoned boaters’! We met two boats at different times coming the other way. The second one we could see we’d end up meeting at the bend, so Mick slowed down, in the end we managed to stop just with the bend in view as the on coming boat twisted round it. No serious bumps or scrapes today.

It being about 4pm we decided to carry on and do the Bucky flight before stopping for the day. NB Grace pulled in above the flight and the single handing lady had also stopped, so we ended up sharing the first lock with her partner. Then we were on our own again, I handed the windlass over to Mick and drove the rest of the way down the flight as my ankle was starting to complain. All the locks were in our favour as the sky got greyer and greyer. At Wilton we pushed on a few more miles before pulling in near the Bedazzled boat. Here hopefully we were far enough away from the M1 and railway to have a peaceful night.

15 locks, 9 down, 6 up, 8.06 miles, 1 wind, 1 boat facing south, 9 boats from nowhere! 1 tunnel with 2 mysterons, 3 boats to share with all heading for London, 16mm set of fat ropes, 2 shackles, 5 litres gunnel black, 0 coal scuttle, 1 pair green Farahs, 6 Braunston BANGERS! 0 cat walk, 0 trees, 5 tellings off! 1 cheshire cat hot pot for tea! 1 brother, 1 fabulous wisteria, 1 tree raft island, 0 snowman.

Going The Wrong Way! 5th May

Home Farm Footbridge to Braunston Lock 2

A sunny morning waking up to green outside and not having to be up and at it straight away. That’s better. Although taking our time did mean that plenty of boats went past us on the way to the top of the Watford Flight. Oh well, no hurry.

Only half a mile on the M1 rumbles over the top of the canal close to the start of the Watford flight. Ahead two boats were shuffling themselves on and off the water point, so we fell third in line to go down. Mick walked down the flight and found the Lockie to sign in, only one boat to wait for on the way up then we’d all take it in turns down the staircase.

We helped get NB Salamander going down through the first single lock and setting the top of the staircase for them before we were on our way. I worked the locks, light gate beams and no negotiating the bend towards the bottom, Mick could do that bit. Apart from the noise from the M1 this is a lovely flight, the horse chestnut trees were in flower and the sun was shining.

 

In the pound below the staircase there was a boat waiting to come up. The crew were chatting away watching as I worked Oleanna down, opening and closing gates, limping as I went. Have to say I did find myself limping that bit more as we reached the bottom and I opened both bottom gates as three people stood watching me. Down the next lock and the boat waiting below set the next lock for us, I made sure my limp was reduced and thanked them.

 

Meandering our way now away from the M1 towards Norton Junction. The yellow of the rapeseed fields isn’t quite so photogenic with a blue boat as it used to be with Lillian. At Welton Haven Marina we peered through the hedge to see if we could spot the Carefree Cruising Boats, just visible was our old shareboat NB Winding Down. We’ve been very surprised with all the time we’ve spent around Crick not to have seen her pass once. But at this time of the year we are unlikely to know the people on board now as all the original yellow share owners have sold up.

We knew we would soon be passing a familiar boat, it would be predominantly grey, but we weren’t expecting it to be NB Jubilee. With Halfie at the helm we had a brief conversation as we passed, they were heading up to Crick. No sign of the boat we were expecting along the 14 day moorings before the junction, but as we reached it we could see the red pram cover of NB Waiouru moored up near the top of the Long Buckby flight. This was the way we should be heading, but Mick turned us towards Braunston Tunnel instead, the wrong way! Then he reversed Oleanna towards the locks, the right way but the wrong way round!

NB Waiouru is for sale, Tom and Jan are currently busy going through their possessions deciding what to ship back to Australia and what to get rid of. Their five years of exploring the canal network is coming to an end, but there are new adventures ahead for them. It was good to catch up with Jan and wish them well for the next chapter, hope Tom’s snooze was restorative.

The ropes that Oleanna came with are fine, but we’d rather have thicker ones, my right hand cramps up with the ones we’ve got at the moment. So we continued heading away from London to see what Tradline in Braunston would have to offer us. This meant Braunston Tunnel, one of Mick’s favourites. There is a large bend part way through betwen 400 and 500m from the south portal, of course we could see someone coming the other way so Mick slowed down hoping we would pass on a straight bit. This we did and today there was no boat to boat contact, just a gentle grating noise from Oleanna on the tunnel side, luckily only a scrape on the rubbing strake not the cabin side. By now there was a tunnel light following us so when we reached the lock we waited for them to join us going down.

 

Our partnering boat stopped after three locks and we stopped after the forth. Even though we were moored within sight of the Admiral Nelson pub we managed to refrain and cooked on board whilst Tilly came and went. Plenty of woofers here so at times I stayed on the cat walk, occasionally I had to duck behind the grass so they couldn’t see me.Our boat seems to have shrunk!

11 locks (4 of which a staircase), 6.63 miles, 1 wrong way, 1 right way facing the wrong way, 1 wrong way again, 2 blogging boats, 1 goodbye, 40 winks for Tom, 1 friend for Lillian, 1 tunnel, 2 mysterons, 2 hours with the furry fence, 8 pirates, 1 large sledgehammer. 

 

At Last! 4th May

Crick Marina to Home Farm Footbridge

It’s taken us over five years, lots of patience, wrong turns, research, more patience, drawings, models and more patience to finally be setting off on our bespoke narrowboat Oleanna. NB Lillyanne was only ever intended as a bridgeing boat (as it were) whilst we waited for Oleanna to be built. Three years later we have finally started the clock on our ‘year afloat’, well that was the original idea, we’ve already got plans formulating for summer 2018!

The last of the rubbish was disposed of in the marina bins, Houdini’s shelf ended up going into our neighbours shed for future possibilities (good it will have a third life), a new gas bottle purchased, electric and mooring fees settled, there was only one thing left to do, a visit to the garden centre.

Our friends Bridget and Storm gave us some bean plants when we saw them at Keadby a few weeks ago. My normal potting medium has been mole hills, but we haven’t come across any and we needed a bigger trough and some canes for them to grow up. Andy and Irene from NB Kamili came with us so that they could stock up on herbs, which of course meant a rosemary and parsley plant for us too.

With plants and compost stowed we were ready. The paparazzi arrived (Lizzie) to help record the event. Our trip from Sheffield was Oleanna’s maiden voyage, but today we were heading off on our new adventures, leaving Crick as we had done back on 9th June 2014 on Lillian.

Of course the wind had got blustery just for us especially as we would have an audience. Andy stood on the rear of NB Kamili whilst Lizzie headed with Irene to the other side of the marina to take photos. Despite the wind the reverse out from our mooring went well, thank goodness we didn’t have to introduce ourselves to a new section of the marina as we have in the past. There were many waves goodbye from Irene and Lizzie as we disappeared from view. One last wave to NB Lillyanne as we passed by the brokerage moorings.

Tunnel mode was engaged with waterproof coats, Crick tunnel is always dripping wet even though there has been so little rain of late.

Shortly after we’d entered the north portal Oleanna reared up a little in the water, a couple of bumps under the base plate of something soft. Mick cut the engine and we glid over whatever it was. As we approached the mid point a boat coming towards us kept in the centre, he stayed there and stayed there, only just nudging slightly over. Luckily we had both slowed right down, we were as far over as was possible, so the inevitable happened, bump! He soon discovered that there was more room to his starboard side than he’d thought!

Once through to the other side and back in the sunshine it felt like our adventures could start properly. So what did we do, we moored up for the day. Well not quite straight away as we couldn’t get into the side! With all our possessions now on board, Oleanna is sitting low in the water, we think a bit too low, her gas vents are below the water line. There is some ballast that we can move from the starboard side, instead of moving it from one side to the other we may actually move it off the boat altogether. A bit further on the water was deeper and we managed to pull in with full sun on our solar panel. This will now become a deciding factor on moorings, the quality of sunlight.

With the trip computer turned off, the music played! and Tilly was granted shore leave for the rest of the afternoon. With tail held high she spent her time coming in through the side hatch and then immediately exiting through the open rear hatch. As yet we still need to sort out Tilly friend protection for Oleanna so that we don’t swelter in the summer or have the patter of tiny rodent feet at night.

0 locks, 2.22 miles, 2 herb plants, 15 litres dehydrated compost, 1 new gas bottle, £19.95 compared with £2.75, 1 reverse, 2nd time of starting out from Crick, 1 big thank you to Crick Marina, 1 belated goodbye to Noel, 1 long goodbye wave, 1 yellow boat tucked away, 1 soaking, 1 centre hogging Willow, 3rd attempt at mooring, 2 hours permitted, 4 hours enjoyed, 0 friends, 8 circuits, 3 trees, 1 good new adventure, 1 new climbing frame, 4 glasses of fizz to celebrate the 5 years of waiting.

 

Musical Boats. 3rd May

Various places around Crick Marina

 

By the end of Friday Lillian was just about cleared of all our possessions. Finding space to sit down on Oleanna in the evening was quite hard as things still needed to be sorted on her. I found somewhere and stayed put in fear that should I leave it it would be filled with far less important stuff than me. The list of jobs instead of getting shorter seemed to be growing, not a good thing. Still with a few things on the list for the day I popped over to help Lizzie on NB Panda fill with water, this ended up with us opening a bottle of white and sitting out enjoying the early evening before it got too cold. Once Mick had finished his chores in the engine bay he came to join us.

Saturday we started to play musical boats. We wanted to take Lillian out to Cracks Hill to touch up her gunnels, she was on the inside with Oleanna on the outside tied to her. So we retied Oleanna to the pontoon at the bow, I held onto the centre line whilst Mick reversed Lillian out into the marina. Once I had pulled Oleanna back in I hopped on the back of Lillian and we were off, hoping no-one else had beaten us to the mooring. With the thought that the port side would be left to dry longer at the end of the day we winded so that I could paint the starboard side first, giving the maximum amount of time to dry before we got back to the marina.

A sand down of the sides with a bit of extra on the scrapes followed by a wash and a coat of multiforte was all she needed. I was very glad I’d done a good job on them back in September. Once the port side was done we winded again and the process was repeated. As Lillian was now empty we had packed ourselves a picnic which we had sitting on the bench seat over looking the hill, it is a lovely spot.

 

They thought they were being clever. Changing the view from my window would make me think that they’d been busy moving the outside. But it was too quiet for that to have happened. Then it changed again. Yellow to the right, yellow to the left, just what is a cat to think!

On our return we were spotted by Micky and Dave from NB George, once Micky realised that we had Oleanna moored up she was straight round for a nosy. With all the planned painting completed back in the marina and Lillian’s stern out of bounds until it dried we headed to The Red Lion with Lizzie and Gary for steak and chips all round. A well deserved evening off.

 

 

 

On Sunday the serious cleaning continued. The ceilings and cabin walls were washed down, windows polished and a couple of wood work jobs were ticked off the list. Mick made an impressive job of the oven and fridge and started on the brass. We discovered that the people whose mooring we were occupying had returned early from their cruise on Saturday and had been quite irate at there being a boat in their spot, luckily we were out on Lillian at the time so were oblivious, wonder what they would have thought if there had been Lillian there too?

On Monday the owners of NB Jacaranda came back from a couple of nights away and decided that they would like their mooring back as they had changed their plans and wouldn’t be heading back out. So we quickly stopped what we were doing and once we knew where we could move to we brought each boat out of the mooring in turn and moved onto the next pontoon, the other side of NB Kamili. Yellow back to the right, but a different green boat the other side.

Borrowing Lizzies bench and hose pipe I spent much of the morning giving Lillian’s covers a good scrub to remove the worst of the winters green. A few touch ups on the grab rail and a thorough floor wash whilst Mick washed the roof down and finished off the brass polishing. We were starting to run out of steam by the time we’d finished. Poor Oleanna looked like a bomb had hit her with possessions everywhere. At last we tried my drawing board in the specially made slot at the end of the galley and dinette. The manufacturers had given me the folded dimensions of the board but they had omitted to include the knobs that stick out that hold the parallel motion in place! It was too tall on it’s side for the lid to close Grrrr!!! I was hoping to be able to store folding stools in there too. However with a bit of careful positioning everything would still fit with the drawing board on it’s side. Phew.

Now that Lillian was clear of all our possessions apart from pictures and she’d been cleaned to within an inch of her life we had to dress her for her publicity photos. Lizzie lent me a few photos in frames and some nicer looking place mats so that the table could be laid. A few books and dvds were popped on some shelves and the bed was made up with our spare duvet. Some spices put in the racks and our kettle and cast iron pot strategically positioned in the galley. We had done it, pooped we certainly were.

Tuesday arrived and there was a chance that some chaps from Finesse might have been turning up to do some snagging on Oleanna, but luckily they plan to come later, which left us both free to be able to chat with the boat inspector from ABNB. As we bought Lillian through ABNB it saved quite a bit of time as they still had a record of her details. Over the years we have replaced halogen bulbs for LEDs, altered the dinette and cupboards and bought a sofa bed. So the details were amended.

A long exterior shot was required and so was a pump out. But first we had to move Oleanna out of the way, we moored her at the bottom of the grass bank and then returned for Lillian. No Yellow, but grass and people to watch. The pooh sucky machine was hooked up for the last time, plenty of rinses and flushes of the toilet. Once Justin from ABNB had taken photos from the other side of the marina we climbed aboard for our last ever cruise in her. Only a third of a mile, the sun was shining, the wind was minimal. We turned out onto the cut pootled along and turned into the other part of the marina where some ABNB moorings are. Mick reversed her in and she was tied off to NB Kestrel.

We finished off the paperwork for her sale over lunch and popped it into the office with a set of keys. All that was left to do was to reclaim the dressing. Oleanna needed a good sort out before anymore could come aboard, but we did get our duvet back.

On Wednesday morning we caught the No.96 bus into Rugby from outside the marina. We needed a few bits that Wilko would provide us with, a door mat, clock etc. and whilst we were there we managed a quick look around the centre. Worth a longer visit the next time we are near. Then it was time for us to say our last goodbyes to Lilllian. The last picture to be taken down was one of my mum, Lillian, that has travelled with us for the last three years. Once she was down we locked the stern doors and left NB Lillyanne to find new owners through ABNB.

A last supper before we left had been arranged at The Red Lion with Lizzie, Irene and Andy. This time we all managed to try something other than the steak. My Pepper and Mushroom Stroganoff was very tasty and the trout looked good too. With good company, good food and beer it was a fitting way to end a full on week and an emotional day.

0 locks, 0 miles (on NB Oleanna), 0.3 miles (on NB Lillyanne), 1 trip to Cracks Hill, 3 winds, 3 boat shuffles over 4 days, 1 so not impressed cat, 2 pristine gunnels, 6 brass mushrooms, 1 clean roof, 2 sad boaters, 2nd and 3rd visit to the pub, 2 steaks only, 1 immaculate Lillian, 1 untidy Oleanna, 1 week of hard work, 1 boat for sale.