NIGHT-TIME MANOUVERS

SATURDAY 24TH TO SUNDAY 25TH OCTOBER 2009

It was lovely, on a sunny Saturday morning, to welcome onboard, my unofficial Step Daughter Tor, who is expecting a baby early next year and her husband Nick. We headed off directly towards Braunston and stopped for lunch between bridges 103 and 104, mooring for the night just passed the main entrance to the Braunston boatyard and marina. I noted the very smart new wooden footbridge that BW had constructed to replace the creeky old one over the other entrance to the marina as we walked up three of the locks to the Admiral Nelson Pub. The offer of a free bottle of wine with a couple of steaks convinced us to stay and eat and it must be said that the steaks were excellent.

Sunday morning also dawned bright and beautiful and an hour earlier than the day before, as this was the weekend that the clocks went back. We cruised on towards Hillmorton giving Nick more time to prove that he was a natural at the tiller. We turned before the locks and headed back towards our home marina at Wigrams Turn, wondering if we would get there before dark. We were right to wonder as during the last thirty minutes it got progressively darker until it was only our bright little tunnel lamp that lit the way. To our surprise there were still several other boats on the move, but by the time I was lining up to approach our pontoon it was seriously dark, however we came alongside very accurately, this has now added a new, but not too scary dimension to our boating experiences. Tor and Nick bade us farewell having rung out of us a promise to do some baby-sitting next year, in return for bed and bath, a deal.

Again apologises for the belated posting of this blog, but apart from obviously getting lazier, a lot has been going on in our lives. Between the stag weekend and Tor and Nick visiting us there has been not one, but two weddings, plus some time in France riding my trusty old MotoGuzzi motorbike with chums Phil & Lynne and subsequently loads more stuff, but for interested followers we are both fit and well and planning for a new arrival in the New Year, exciting, but no more details yet.

In case there is no more SKYY related stuff to blog about until after Christmas I wish everyone a jolly good Christmas and we look forward to plenty of cruising and blogging in 2010 as we head North.

A STAGGERING WEEKEND

SATURDAY 26TH TO 27TH SEPTEMBER 2009

Our Boating Buddies and Chocolate Chums, Kim & John are getting married in October and naturally there has to be Hen and Stag do’s. The Hen affair was a ‘Bad Taste’ (dress wise not food) weekend in a country house in deepest Hampshire, well away from prying male eyes.

For the boys, well we were much more original!!! A Pirate weekend on board SKYY. Gradually the numbers grew to twelve and Jacquie persuaded me that SKYY would be a bit overloaded so we hired another boat and we had us a convoy. By eleven o’clock on Saturday morning ten of the twelve scurvy knaves had assembled on the quay side of the marina. John the groom had been done up as an unlikely Kiera Knightly, whilst I assumed command as Cap’n Hook. We showed no mercy to Don the Harbour Master despite his desperate pleading, but we went no further than a bit of pillaging, saving the raping for later.

With the Jolly Roger flying from the stern of both boats and Kiera at the helm of the good ship ‘Francesca’ we headed up the Grand Union Canal, through the three locks at Calcut and stopped for ships biscuits and weevils at the Boat Inn, actually for most of us it was a very substantial Boat Burger and chips. We continued down the Stockton Locks with much ‘Arrrrrghing’ and ‘Shivering of Timbers’ until the Blue Lias Inn hove into view where we moored up to refill the barrels and recover one of the Jolly Rogers that had got dislodged by the roof of the bridge just before the pub.

Refreshed and ready for more pirating we moved on through the last couple of locks and moored up at the bottom of The Cuttle Inn garden, where we were joined by the eleventh member of the crew. The Cuttle provided some excellent victuals, beautifully presented and reasonable priced and didn’t seem to mind the good humoured, but noisy pirate drinking games.

One or two of the younger friskier pirates headed to the Two Boat Inn, for what they thought was a karaoke session, whilst Kiera was put to bed to sleep it off.

On Sunday morning dishevelled crew members gradually surfaced, having abandoned their Pirate costumes and amazingly Kiera, now restored to John the Groom set about cooking a full English breakfast for everyone. The last one of our party joined us in time for breakfast, having just arrived home at 3.30 am from a family holiday, that’s true friendship.

We tried in vain to turn the 68 ft hire boat outside The Cuttle, so instead headed onto the Bascote staircase lock where we turned both boats in the pound, came back up the lock and started the return journey up the remaining thirteen locks. By now the crew had some idea of what they needed to do and the locks swiftly disappeared behind us.

A brief stop at lunch time at the Blue Lias for beer, as we were still full of breakfast, sausage, egg and bacon. We arrived back at Wigrams Turn Marina with the flags still fluttering as I am sure must have been the hearts of many a young lady that we had ‘Arrrrrghed at over the last couple of days. Maybe not!!!, but what a great time we all had. Now the wedding to look forward to where there will be time to collectively remember our days before the mast.

GIZMOS

THURSDAY 17TH SEPTEMBER 2009

WOW !! have we discovered an amazing gizmo. With our chums coming on board last week we asked hem to bring some CD’s with them. We don’t have that many CD’s on board having ripped most of our collection onto the computer and then onto our MP3 player. We have a little set of speakers for the MP3 but they are no match to the on board sound system and I have been considering buying a more modern radio/CD player that had a socket to plug in the MP3.

Jacquie son Ashley had a gizmo in his car which allowed him to play his IPod through the car radio. It is a little transmitter that plugs into the earphone socket of an MP3 player and with the car radio tuned to the same frequency, perfect sound reproduction came through the cars speakers.

I immediately went onto Amazon and searched for MP3 FM transmitter. And there they were. I selected one at £9.99 called LUPO from GIZMO-DEALS, and a day later it was delivered to our marina. It is amazing, now over 100 albums, 1,500 tracks plus are all available through the on board radio’s four speakers.



I first found a empty frequency somewhere between BBC2 and BB3 and saved that on one of the radio preset buttons and then tuned the gizmo onto the same frequency and instantly there was Freddie Mercury blasting out of the radios speakers. It took a little wandering around to find the best position to virtually eliminate any back ground hiss.
FABULOUS!!!!!!

Just another thought for those who are now contemplating ripping CD’s onto their computers. If the internet is available at the same time and the web page WWW.gracenote.com is online the computer should automatically search for information regarding the disc that is being ripped. The album name, all track details including artist should appear and in many cases the actual CD cover will replace the generic one usually portrayed. It maybe that initially you have to set the programme to search for information, but I have copied copies of some pretty obscure CD’s and all the details pops up. AMAZING!!!

SAFETY CERTIFICATES

WEDNESDAY 16TH SEPTEMBER 2009

Today we had our four yearly safety check carried out, by Lee Freeman of Northampton, it was Lee’s dad Eddie who carried out the survey when we were considering buying SKYY. Lee was every bit as charming and as efficient as his dad and with no problems being found we are now proud owners of a current certificate

What does surprise me is, that although we have fitted both smoke and C.O. and LPG detectors, this doesn’t seem to be a safety requirement. Having the means to put out a fire is obviously necessary but apparently not the means to be alerted to fire or a gas leak. Seems to me that more lives would be saved and damage to boats reduced if the fitting of these detectors was mandatory. I am not in favour of a Nanny State, but if we have to have these safety checks it might as well insist on these easily fitted, life saving devices.

BIKE FOR SALE

Not strictly blogging, but I thought that I would take advantage of this medium to advertise my motorbike for sale. Since taking to the boat Jacquie, my wonderful wife, tell me that I can't have a boat two bikes and a wife so my big Beemer has to go.
It is a 2002 K1200 RS SE complete with BMW side boxes and tank bag and a Givi top box. It has done 54,000 miles and has been fully serviced and maintained by BMW at South London Motorcycles. It also has Auto Com fitted for rider to pillion conversation.

In April of this year I had new front disc, pads and battery fitted and a new MOT, but is currently SORN registered, apart from that it is ready to go.

It has carried me faithfully all around Europe and I shall be sad to say goodbye. It is up here in the Midlands raring to go and offers in excess of £2,500 would do the deal.

If anyone interested, please leave a comment and a email address or phone number so I can contact to discuss further.

BACK HOME

THURSDAY 10TH SEPTEMBER 2009

This was the final day on SKYY for A & B but the sun still shone on them as they moved down the last three Braunston Locks. I walked ahead as I wanted to pop into Braunston Chandlers to get a pot of paint, as it would soon be time to rub down and repaint the battle scars below the gunnels and always a pleasant place to stop for a chat and get my wallet out.

I jumped back onto SKYY as she exited the last lock and then back to Wigrams Turn Marina in time for lunch and to wave Brian and Ann on their way back home. Another great trip comes to an end; it doesn’t take much, good chums, lovely scenery, the tranquillity of the water, good food, and sunshine, perfect!

PINS TO PINTS

WEDNESDAY 9TH SEPTEMBER 2009

As we pulling the pins to leave Crick a couple stopped and said that they had seen our blog and that they had just moved onboard their narrow boat OAKFIELD two weeks previously and so far were greatly enjoying the beginning of their adventure. I see from their blog http://nboakfield.blogspot.com that that they are called Wozie and Bottle, (must be an interesting story behind those great names) and I wish you a happy cruising future.

Our return down the Watford locks was very speedy as we were the only boat there. We did have time to fathom out how the staircase locks actually worked, as no water is passed directly between locks, it all goes via the side ponds, it makes you realise how clever the original architects were.



After lunch it was back down the Grand Union Main Line, through the Braunston Tunnel and a lovely mooring, for the night, between locks three and four. the Admiral Nelson was just a totter away, but it took several goes to pull me a perfect pint of Spitfire, but the bar staff finally and with good humour, managed it.