We are on a mission! We have ten days to get back onto the Macclesfield Canal in time for me to have yet another operation. This time it’s a reconstruction of my right shoulder from an event that took place 10 years ago when our, then new to us, dog decided to try and rip my arm off.
Collecting Heron from Redhill Marina near to Ratcliffe on Soar, I worked out that we had 45 locks and just over 70 miles to cruise. With concerns over stoppages, we’ve ploughed on doing long days; averaging 2.5 mph (wow!), queuing at locks, chugging on through hail, torrential rain and gale force winds. We’ve made it in six days and now need a few days to recover!
Along the way we passed through Great Haywood and spotted the Jam Butty Boat, so of course we had to stop and stock up with jams and marmalade; choosing was a demanding task with such a fine array of amazing flavours!
Moving the boat every day is something that we haven’t done for a long time, it’s what we used to do for a family holiday! We’d drag the kids off and spend two weeks of forcing them into hard labour cruising a canal circuit like the Cheshire Ring or the Four Counties Ring (lots of fresh air- it was good for them).
Since becoming liveaboards, we are now rich in time and can cruise for as long as it takes to find the next place to moor, anything from a few minutes to a few hours. Then we usually stay put for three or four days to go exploring and enjoy the scenery, so moving everyday has been quite a shock to the system!
We’ve discovered that a newly painted water tank delivers very smelly, chemically scented water. Thankfully we already have a filtered drinking water tap which mitigates this, but it has meant that we’ve needed to flush the water tank five times during those six days of travelling. It takes about 2.5 hours to empty a full tank of water, at 10 secs/litre, and yes, we were that bored that we measured the flow rate. On the plus side, we now know that our tank is a whopping 900 litres and means we could probably last for 3 weeks without finding a waterpoint for a refill (instead of the 7-10 days rule that we’ve been following for the last 15 years).
The next few weeks are going to be pretty boring for Ian, so I’ve come up with a cunning plan to keep him happy – it’s boat paint touch up time; roof, gunnels, foredeck, front lockers and even the red triangle of the cratch! (Bloomin’ list keeps getting longer! 🤣 – Ian) He’s going to need all that extra water from our repainted tank…..for showering!!
