LITTLE DOG TO BRAUNSTON

FRIDAY 5TH TO SUNDAY 7TH JANUARY 2010

At last the temperature was nudging ten degrees as I and many others busied themselves upon their boats in the Marina. I was being ably assisted by our new recruit, Duggie who was now confidently jumping on and off SKYY and was completely at home in his watery surroundings. I thought that the cute antics of the Andrex dogs was pure marketing, but running through the salon followed by a trail of loo paper has become one of Duggie’s favourite tricks. He has now made many friends in the Marina both human and canine and when Jacquie returned from the gym we thought it would be a good idea to go for a cruise and introduce him to the wider world of narrow boat life.

I felt the warmth of the sun on my back as we headed out of the Marina and turned towards Braunston. We originally decided to go in the direction of the Folly Pub to see if the New Management had made any significant improvements, but the blue sky encouraged us to travel further and although we have been thgis this way so often the journey was delightful. Duggie, on his harness and lead, happily surveyed the changing scenery from the rear deck and at bridge 105 Jacquie and Duggie jumped ship, rejoining at bridge 103, Duggie having performed his land based duties.

I hadn’t realised, but this weekend was the OwnerShips show in Braunston Marina and as the sun set I remarked how crowded the moorings seemed as we approached the marina and amazingly found a SKYY sized mooring immediately before the entrance.

On Saturday morning we strolled into the Marina to see what was on offer. It was stuffed full of OwnerShip boats and friendly souls inviting the many visitors aboard, but Duggie was the main attraction with so many people stopping us say hullo to the little fella. We bought a smart red bandana from the President Steam Boat stand before strolling up to Wharf House chandlery to buy a new boat hook as the old one had rotted. I also ordered a pair of single chrome supports as the old pole just lay on the roof and I reckon that’s why it rotted.

As we returned we popped into the marquee and enjoyed a jumbo sausage hot dog and a burger whilst making new friends with a couple who had a black Miniature Schnauzer. We also spotted Brian and Diana on N.B. Harnser as they cruised passed, Brian commented that I was brave in leaving my broadband dongle on its little mast, Jacquie agreed, not wise to leave such a tempting little object so close to hand, I think I may have become to trusting.

Sunday morning had us strolling up into Braunston Village to buy a Sunday paper, accompanied by the lovely sounds of the Church bells. We met another local couple with a six year Schnauzer bitch and at, nearly, four months, Duggie was considerably bigger than her so maybe there is a bit of Giant Irish Wolf Hound in him as has been suggested, ohh I hope not. The return cruise in the afternoon was much colder than the outward bound but I wrapped up in lots of layers, safe in the knowledge that our stove was keeping the inside of SKYY toasty warm and I enjoyed the journey, passing several boats on the way. The engine was sounding sweet and all systems seem to be working well.

After tying up at our pontoon I immediately filled up with water as the word was, that the supply to all pontoons would be turned off on Monday as the weather was set to continue getting colder. I have now, two 25lt water containers on the rear deck, these I refilled with fresh water. When I ordered the containers from an EBay supplier, they showed a capped off bleed hole on the top, the ones delivered didn’t have this facility. I considered sending them back, but I drilled a small hole into the handle and this allows sufficient air into the carriers for a smooth transfer of water through the tap and down the short length of hose, as I tip the carrier over, my thumb covers the hole until the suction of water leaving the container starts to draw the air in.

I had two comments left on my previous blog, from Gary and 8542, both the comments were in Chinese characters, thanks for the comments, but regretfully I have no idea what is being said.

Less than a couple of months now before we set off for our planned, six months cruise up North, can’t wait, getting itchy feet now, but need some warmer weather to finish the repainting of the port gunnel to rubbing strake. The bottom blacking is booked so we should look quite smart when we set off. Yep I know it won’t last long.

ABLE DOGGIE DUGGIE

WEDNESDAY 7TH JANUARY 2010

Happy New Year to everyone on this ohh so cold day, but and for all concerned friends and relatives, we are not actually on board SKYY at the moment, but tucked up in a very warm house in Bedfordshire with Jacquie’s brother and sister-in-law. So why am I blogging as I only usually blog about our SKYY adventures?

As I alluded to in my last blog in November, we were awaiting an arrival and I can now proudly say that we have signed up a new crew member in the shape of Duggie a, nearly, three month old Miniature Schnauzer. He hasn’t been on board yet, but he is a good car traveller, so I expect him to take to life afloat with aplomb. He has charm and character aplenty is now almost house trained. I am not sure what his onboard duties will be, but I think he will be a roving ambassador of friendship.

We will soon back on board and it would seem that the temperatures will still be around zero. I expect SKYY to be firmly stuck in the ice and going nowhere, hopefully we will have enough fresh water on board and spare capacity in the loo tank to see out the freeze up, but in the meantime as well as our trusty stove to keep us comfortable we will have warm laps, as fortunately Duggie is very cuddly.

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.