DIY Boat Style

Well you take a simple job like putting up a shower rack you mix it with a narrow boat and you add a small metal screw. Drop the screw down the plug hole and there you have it disaster. Now let me think … “how big is the impeller? Will the screw go through without causing any damage? “ As Jimmy Saville used to say “Clonk Click” or was it “Click Clonk”? Anyway the screw didn’t make it and the water pump ground to a halt.

Under the floor of a very small cupboard resides the water pump. We normally are not interested in these things, but why oh why did the installing engineer locate this important little item of work half way into a very tight space, why didn’t they place it at the entrance. Where normal sized humans can unscrew, remove refit etc., with ease.

I could see it with the aid of a torch; well sort of as varifocals are not very good in confined spaces, so the all important screw heads were a bit of a blur. And I could touch it with one hand, the other hand would have liked to go through the side wall and hold on to the end of the screw driver or the jubilee clip and offer some form of guidance. But this was not possible.

After playing some Simple Simon manoeuvres, “you put your left hand in you take it out, you put your right hand in you shake it all about”. I eventually hit on the correct approach. You put you left hand and arm in and here comes the creative part, you put your head in and then squeeze your right arm between your head and the floor. This allows full manipulation powers and the easy removal of misguided screws trapped inside impellar blades. The task completed simply get up and go; no way I was stuck.

I know that they catch monkeys by putting nuts into a cage with a small hole and the monkey fits his hand through the hole but cannot get it out again with his fist full of nuts not thinking he can just drop the nuts, he is trapped. I had no nuts, well that is not strictly true but I had nothing to drop. I just couldn’t leaver my self out, but wait a minute I nearly impaled my right ear with the screw driver which was still in my hand. I was a right monkey, I let the screw driver go and remembering Bunuels “Exterminating Angel” I first removed my right arm and then after some effort my head and I was out, job done and no sacrificial lambs. Fitting a shower rack is not like this at home.

Loading the Boat

We finished our work on the Friday and so were now free to start loading up the boat. I am on holiday for a week and Frances has two so we can ease into the cruising life style that we hope to adopt.

It felt a bit like moving house as we packed up our things to bring to the boat, I guess we are moving house. We had moored about 200 metres from a parking place so a bit of a walk with our heavy loads. It was Wimbledon final weekend so we would also have to make the move dodging the rain showers.

As we got started with the move it reminded me of when we first got married, we did not have a car then and we had moved into a house in West Watford with little furniture and no money. We bought everything second hand and brought it home on a little green cart that had been left in the house and now here we were thirty odd years later and doing the same but with a fold up trolley.

So what to take with us? I have a few interests that I wish to pursue out on the cut; there’s music, Keyboard and recorders and the sheet music to go with these. Ham radio, this requires a radio Transceiver, Morse key and extendable 30 foot mast and antennas. Chess board and pieces. Water colouring, I want to get back into this so I have my drawing pads and paints. Photography, where do the photos come from? So a camera with lenses and tripod. Cycling, apart from the Bikes there is all of the gear – Helmets (why are they so big?), shoes etc. lets not forget the tools and Stand for working on the Bikes. I was relating this to Gabs and she said “poor mum”.

Well it took all day Saturday, Sunday and Monday and countless trips with armfuls of cloths, food and knick knacks dodging rain and dancing in the mud to make any great inroads into the pile of stuff that we needed to shift into our new home. The marathon Wimbledon men’s final didn’t help the situation either.

On Tuesday morning we took a car down to Rickmansworth and left it down there so we could continue the packing from a new location, we needed to get the sense that we were on the way. Besides the weather forecast for Wednesday was very heavy showers not just the “light” showers as we had been experiencing over the last few days. So we thought it a good idea to move while we could still see the sun, occasionally at any rate.

Just before we set off the pump-out light came on to indicate that we could use the loo for one more day. Fortunately the Croxley Marina was just below the next lock and we could pump out there. We also topped up with diesel while we were at it. Four years ago when we started narrow boating we had paid 48p per litre for red diesel and now it cost us 91p. For the land locked I guess this still sounds cheap.

We left the marina and passed under the A412 and as we rounded the corner we came across a narrow boat blocking our way. It slowly drifted back to the bank to allow us to pass; I got off to see what was happening and discovered that the mooring pin had come undone so after putting it right we moved on. The bright sunshine had given way to more rain as we arrived in Rickmansworth two hours later.

Well as blogs go this is getting pretty boring, I may have to resort to fiction, of course we could go somewhere.