Friday 5 February 2010 First time aboard this year

We left Suffolk in pouring rain and arrived at Napton in the sun shine. The fist thing we noticed as we drove through the village was a sign saying that The Folly is now under new management. I don't know if this means its been sold or the owner has just got someone to manage it for him, it will be interesting to see what happens to the place.

The boat was reasonably warm and after a quick check round I started the water pump to refill the system, everything went fine until I flushed the loo. This identified that a plastic elbow had failed in the frost and shot water over my foot and the bathroom floor. I quickly turned the taps on to relieve the pressure and went and turned the pump off before remaking the pipe work with a new fitting.
The engine fired up first shot and was soon putting some amps back into the batteries, not very fast but I do need a new set sometime soon.  I light the Dickinson Stove but the diesel was very reluctant to flow into the burner. At about 2 pm we slid down to the top lock and loaded up from the car before making our way down the flight on a spring like day. Diana steered the boat while I walked with the dog and did the locks. We met a boat coming up at the bottom lock just as we had a few spots of rain, although we only got a few spots it was obviously doing a bit more a short way to the east which resulted in a spectacular rainbow over the BW building against the black sky. We continued on as far as the Bridge Inn where we moored at about 4 pm. The Dickinson was still protesting so I decided to change the inline filter, I have never done it since I fitted it so it didn't owe me to much. I even managed to do it without  the stove going out but then had a bit of hassle bleeding the air out so that the burner would pick up instead of looking like a candle.

I had a look at the history on the weather station, since we were here on the 18 December , outside it had been down to -11.5 and inside -5.5 today its +9c