Monday 11th July
Today we have come to Marple and were lucky to get in the last (at the time) vacant space. The prop whine has been absolutely horrendous today, even in tick over which has been ok up to now. In fact people have been very impressed with us when we have been passing their moored boats because we have slowed to tick over as we pass. This is not (as they may think) so we don’t go past too fast but because the whine occurs between tick over and 1400 revs. We can’t pass moored boats at 1400 revs so we have to slow to tick over or deafen everyone, including ourselves with the whine!
We had noticed that every time we got something like a bit of plastic or string round the prop the whine would stop, so we thought it may help if we deliberately put something round it. We temporarily moored up and Ken put a large cable tie round one of the blades. It didn’t work and we whined our way in to Marple. A boat had passed us while we were stopped and I thought he had just got into the last space when we got to Marple but luckily there was one more space.
We went off to the hardware store and bought a big, raspy file for the prop. Hope it works otherwise we will go mad with the water torture! When we got back we took George to the Ring o’ Bells, hoping to ingratiate ourselves with the landlord so Peter can leave his car there while we take him to Bugsworth, but he was in the kitchen so we didn’t see him. We did enjoy the Robinson’s Unicorn though. If you are wondering (and I’m sure you’re not) why George isn’t reviewing these pubs lately, that is because he went to them all last year when we were up here.
Talking of George we have got to go to the vets tomorrow to make him an appointment for his boosters later on this week. He had them done here last year so he is already registered here which is handy. Hopefully we will be able to get him there, if we pretend we are going to the pub it will be ok!
