Bartimaeus

Another slow day today.  I spent much of the morning finishing off the cupboard demolition job.  I had left various electrical connections dangling off the wall.  This meant that they still worked and were not electrically disconnected at any stage, but it’s only temporary.  So today I fixed them all to the wall and rerouted all the cables that go up to the current TV location ready for it to move too.

We split the tandem and balanced the two parts in the corner to confirm my belief that we can fit it in to the space.  I was pleased to see that it did so, and that it wouldn’t be a massive job to get it in and out.  I tried taking the two parts to the rear deck – also quite easy, no need to use the gang-plank.

We had another shopping trip before trying to set off along the canal.  Yesterday as we approached Carnforth a woman on a boat going the other way gave me a warning.  She said she’d had two jumpers wrapped around her propellor, “so – watch out!”  This canal is so shallow that setting off from the bank usually feels sluggish, but today was so much worse than usual.  By the time I was sure we had a problem, we were already in the middle of a large number of moored boats.  I managed to limp across to a vacant space to check the weed hatch.  Wrapped around the propellor were – two jumpers!

So the question is, did she warn me because she had thrown them back in, or were there four jumpers in the canal at Carnforth?  And how many more might there be?  This puts yarn-bombing in to a whole new light.

We drove far enough to heat some water for showers and then started looking for moorings.  Several failed attempts to get close to the bank later, we came to a swing bridge.  After Clare had operated and got back on, the propellor was again sluggish.  I let the boat drift while I checked the weed hatch again.  I came up empty handed to find we were very close to the bank – so we moored right there!