Monday 1st August
Things started ok this morning with me down the weed hatch again removing the piece of t shirt I tied round the prop last week. I couldn’t untie the knot so I had to cut it off with a pair of scissors. We thought we couldn’t take it in to be looked at with half of Ken’s wardrobe tied round it! When we set off down the locks it was really giving it the biggun, God it was loud! It wasn’t even at a manageable level in tick over as it had been with the cloth round it.
It was Sod’s law that there were a lot of moored boats about for us to try and creep past between Middlewich and Anderton and there were also a lot of boats coming towards us. Apparently there was a boat club, not sure where they were from, travelling together so we had to do a lot of slow noisy manouvres!
During this journey I began to suffer from the effects of mosquito exposure from two nights ago. The evenings have been warm just recently and Saturday night we sat outside until it was nearly dark. We became aware that the wind had dropped and that there were mosquitos about, too late for me though, I had already been bitten 5 times! On my left hand, left shoulder and left knee, right wrist and right foot. Yesterday the bites were itchy but manageable, today though they were a lot worse. The one on the top of my foot has become really bad and my foot has swollen up to double the size! I can hardly get my shoe on and it really hurts. I have been taking piritons so I’ll probably fall asleep any time soon ……………… zzzzzzzz.
Also during this journey Ken, who had been bitten a lot last night but who doesn’t have the same reaction to mosquito bites as me, fell foul of another summer pest and got stung by a wasp! I had to administer Anthisan to the back of his neck while he manfully carried on at the helm!
We arrived at Anderton Marina early afternoon and got into our temporary mooring. We then went and saw the chap in the office about the batteries and the prop. He had been on the phone to the people he had got our prop off, telling them of our problem and they said the leading edges of the blades needed grinding before the prop was fitted. He was pretty peeved because they hadn’t told him this at the time. As it was their fault the prop was fitted without grinding he wanted them to pay the dry dock costs for us to have it done now but they refused. They did send him a diagram of how to grind the blades though so at least it should be done properly this time! We are just waiting for a dry dock slot now.
Our new batteries were fitted this afternoon. There is a saga here as well because while Ken was getting all the junk, I mean all our essential belongings, out of the engine room and taking the boards up, so who ever was replacing the batteries could get the old ones out, he could hear the bilge pump constantly running but no water was being pumped out. It transpired that the pump had fallen off the end of the outlet pipe, in to the bilge, where it was submerged, thus it kept running and was just pumping the water round and round the bilge! Much wailing and gnashing of teeth ensued but eventually Ken fixed this new problem before we sank! We then left the battery fitter to it and buggered off to the pub!
Hopefully tomorrow will be a bit more relaxing.
