We had a strange experience today travelling up to our brokers to check on the boat and run the engine.
What took us 8 days by water took just over an hour and a half in the car, and passing through towns and villages that we had only seen from the river via their locks seemed a little odd!
Also, despite heading in the same direction as our river journey, the roads seemed to pick them up in reverse order according to the map!
Maggie was very good in the car and as it’s been a nice cool day, we could leave her to snooze whilst we went about our business.
The engine started first time and the boat is purring beautifully. Also, the brokers have had their professional cleaners in and she is immaculate, smelling like a brand new car inside.
There has been some interest already, so we are hopeful we may have a quick sale.
Our new friend is due to move his widebeam next week, so we were glad to see him before he goes and catch up with his news.
Meanwhile back at our marina, things are on the move.
This is how it was in January after the boats had been removed:
I took this photo on Thursday.
The letter enclosed with the 2017/18 brochure says the refurbishment is finished and boats will be moving back next week.
One has already taken up its new position and didn’t fit. It is a 70 footer on a 40 foot finger, and as thirty feet of boat was being blown all over the place as it couldn’t be secured properly on ropes, it has had to be moved to run full length along the back walkway pontoon instead.
There is not room anywhere to do anything similar for another 70 footer that needs to be reberthed here and most narrowboats boats returning to this basin will measure between fifty and sixty feet. Widebeams are over sixty feet, so there will be a shortfall on each forty foot finger to secure their ropes to.
We have also noticed that the super-duper electricity bollards on each pair of right hand berths house 4 sockets, which means that any boats berthed opposite will have to trail their cables either across, under or through the pontoon walkway to connect up. There is a similar arrangement where our boat is now, but the decking has suitable gaps to run the cables through to plug in, whereas here, the decking is extremely tightly fitted and there are no such gaps, or at least none that we can see.
Some of these bollards house the water supply too, so anyone in this refurbished basin will now have to supply their own hoses to fill their water tanks or wash their boats.
Safety ladders and life buoys have been duly placed and there are some nifty blue lights that come on at night, so it does look very pretty and colourful.
It looks like the cruisers won’t have to worry though. Although their fingers are shorter than those for the narrows and widebeams, so are they.
This one is berthed below where the new houses are due to be built, though we don’t think that the properties would have mooring rights.
It will be interesting to see how it looks when all of the boats are returned to the water though.
I have visions of a zip.
pensitivity101 