Goodbye, Mrs Duck and brood! We're finally off for a number of months. It seems so right now and we feel really prepared. We are in mid house sale (we say - fingers crossed again) and there is nothing to be gained by staying close to a car, so we're off.Thanks to some dear anonymous friends, we had a little more help pre house sale and therefore now have a generator so that we can create 3kw of 240 power while not plugged in to shore power. That means we can do our own laundry without having to find a laundrette, and we can run the vacuum cleaner and food processor (necessary for mayo and spreadable butter). The bread machine can be run as we motor, as it takes the maximum inverter wattage (the 240 created by the engine powering up batteries whose power is inverted from 12v to 240) and so to run it off generator, it has to be done while batteries are in constant top up mode. We also found a cheap and cheerful fold up bike and Elizabeth is going to paint flowers on it, so the bike lives up to her name, Blossom. Though in the usual 'sad' way of naming things (the generator is Levi - he's blue and is a 'jean'erator....), there is an ulterior motive to painting Blossom - who would want to steal a cheap painted fold up? Compared to a Moulton or Brompton???
So we're off. Well, we were. Just after, we have to say, a stunning turn into the Canal, the engine started smoking and we got slower and slower. We pulled up almost parallel to where we moor, but out on the canal. Opening the weed hatch (the access to the water around the propeller), Pete discovered some old carpet, busily being turned to shreds. We probably collected it from the severely needing dredging marina on our way out. A cold hand, but much cleaner prop on, we started motoring south, heading for the Grand Union. We set off later than we wanted, as the weather was foul. But we're out! And this is being written as we are moored up just south of Bridge 80 on the Oxford.
And before we finish, we thought you'd like to know how we handle this long skinny beast. Well, Elizabeth has found her new calling as a Bow Thruster. For those of you who don't know, a bow thruster is an extra propeller at the front of a boat (the bow, duh), which pushes water to one side or the other, so that the boat maneuvers much more neatly and the skinny beast is not just managed from the propeller and tiller 69 feet away from the bow. Well, Elizabeth uses a bow rope as she stands on the towpath or jetty, wraps it around her back and locks her feet in to where she can; as she holds the bow, Pete uses a gentle forward with hard tiller, then reverses to pivot the stern. When Bella is pointing the right direction, Elizabeth hops back on the bow and swaps the head rope for the boat pole. This she then uses to move the bow by putting the pole generally against the side of the canal and pushing (hard! - Bella is 20 tonnes!!). Every now and then, the move requires more umph and Pete assumes bow thrusting as Elizabeth takes the tiller. Unremarkably, we don't have any pictures of this going on, as we are both busy at the time.
So, we plan to write as much as we can now to follow the journeys. We forgot to blog that we had taken our friends Jane and Simon out for the day, but Simon took films and put them up on YouTube. If you go on to YouTube and look for captain Pete or films by Simon Berry, you'll catch the stunning sunny day. We had a hoot of a last night in the Marina, singing folk songs to the guitar playing of Dominic while Pete, Elizabeth and Helen joined right in. The red wine didn't alter our perception of our stunning performance one bit. 6pm now. G&Ts to kick off the evening.
