Saturday dawned dull and wet, in fact it had been raining most of the night. This rain continued all morning and we were glad we had travelled on Friday.
I had intended cleaning the roof and the starboard side of the boat but I had to shelve that idea until today as it was so wet. Instead we did our packing, which we were going to do today, for our forthcoming trip to Portsmouth.
Today the weather has been much more conducive to outside work and jobs which entail having the back of the boat open. One such job is checking the batteries which Ken duly did this morning.
I did indeed clean the roof and starboard side of the boat and did a bit of remedial work on some rust spots and also did some t cutting.
While I was thus occupied and after he had finished the batteries Ken decided to go to Long Eaton, fill the car with petrol and get a few bits of shopping. However, he thought someone had padlocked the chain across the driveway so he couldn’t get the car out. We decided that we could walk to the Coop later for the shopping and get the petrol tomorrow when we leave.
With nothing else to do he decided to fit the new interlocking mats we had bought for the back deck. He got them out, put them on the roof but unfortunately they weren’t laying flat and one promptly slid off the top of the pile into the canal! Much poking about with the boat hook and even more swearing ensued but to no avail.
After a while he got fed up and decided to ask a resident on one of the boats here about the chain whereupon he discovered that the padlock was done up but the chain wasn’t actually through it! Anyway, he made his escape and did the chores in Long Eaton then went to the chandlery at Sawley Marina and bought another square of interlocking mat!
By this time I had finished what I was doing and it was time to go to the pub and watch the football. Hooray.
Next it is our Portsmouth trip.
