Bartimaeus

The forecast had been for freezing conditions overnight and sleet and snow in the morning.  The air temperature did drop below zero, but the recent warm spell means that the canal itself wasn’t going to freeze.

The boat’s systems spent the evening bringing the batteries up to a fully charged state.  Once that had happened I also triggered an “equalisation charge” – this is a small amount of overcharging that keeps the batteries healthy after they have been deeply discharged.  So that meant we now had full batteries and a full diesel tank.

We weren’t tempted out by the morning’s weather, but when the sleet stopped, I connected the hose to our water tank, and took out the recycling while it was filling.  We had paid to be in the marina for 24 hours, so we set off to the exit before lunch.  Our final piece of business before leaving the Marina was to get the waste tank emptied.

When we arrived yesterday, the outlet was on the canal side.  I’d realised that if we went out of the marina heading back the way we’d come we could reverse on to their jetty and present the outlet on the near side.  There was a brisk wind and some narrow gaps, but I reckoned the wind was blowing the way we wanted for a change.

We reached the exit without trouble, but I ran out of canal width before I’d managed to turn enough.  The wind was moving us very slowly the right way, but I asked Clare to hop off the front so she could push the bow the right way.  I was unaware then of the irony of the sign above my head saying “No Turning”.

With Clare’s help we were soon lined up ready to reverse.  Unfortunately this left Clare on the wrong side of the canal!  She walked over the bridge and back to the boat before we’d finished tying up.

With the pump-out finished we went about a third of a mile down the canal to an interesting mooring spot we’d seen yesterday.  We now had everything filled that should be filled, and everything emptied that should be emptied – except our stomachs.  The bread rolls I’d been making in the morning went in to the oven and soon solved that problem.

Now that we are out of the marina I’ve put the smoke alarm battery in again.  More false alarms yesterday evening required it – and we didn’t wake up dead.

A further domestic task for the day was taking down decorations.  This involved more use of a powered screwdriver than I’m used to.  So we now have everything ship-shape again – or at least boat-shaped.