Katona

You’re not gonna believe this, but first: happy Sunday!

Moving the boat on weekends is normally quite chill: cruise a little, do some locks, cruise a bit more. Yesterday I plodded along for about 8 miles, through 1 little tunnel:

And did 10 locks, until I reached one that wouldn’t open:

Some debris had jammed the gate from beneath, and try as I did it wouldn’t budge. I called the CRT to let them know, and by the morning they had fixed it! The joys, the wonders. When I left that evening I also noticed something funny with one of the kitchen windows:

Condensation… between the panes of glass, aka glazing glaze, aka window sweat, aka I need a new window. At least it was an older one, and I know what I’m doing this time.

Then, today… I was making great progress into Worcester, did a bunch of locks, and then deja vu struck: I was stuck. Utterly wedged once more, coming out of a lock. It was apparently wider at the bottom so I tried lowering the water level, but that made things worse:

You’re not supposed to see under the boat when it’s in the water, and raising the level again started sinking the stern:

So the bilge pump was working overtime to drain the flooded engine bay:

Eventually the stern freed itself, and with help from the lovely locals we managed to move the boat forward almost 5 metres, until we ran out of water to create waves and called it a day

Luckily I’m not on the boat and can enjoy central heating for the night in a cosy field, ready to meet the CRT tomorrow morning (I bet they love me).

Until next Sunday!

- Nick