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Thursday, 14 April 2011

We lose more black 14 04 11

Last night while walking the dog I spoke to the boat moored ahead of us, he asked if we had seen where the two working boats were moored as he wanted to make sure he was ahead of them when he left in the morning.

This morning we heard he depart about 6 am. I worked on the principal that I would leave later and hopefully not catch them up.
We departed about 10 30 am. we had seen a few boats about but nowhere near as many as Tuesday and they all seemed to be going North.We had an uneventful run to Fenny Compton only meeting a couple of boats at the most, Fenny tunnel is much better since BW have cut the off side vegetation back.
We had planned to stop at Fenny to fill with water but both taps were in use so we carried on making our way around the Wormleighton bends. As we approached Marston Doles top lock we caught up to the motor and butty pulled over to the side with the stern line of the butty tied to the DIS lock marker. Just as my bow was level with their elm the woman on the butty untied it and the chap on the motor opened it up to pull away, I was by now already passing the butty and catching up with the motor still pulling and his bows swinging out across the cut, needless to say he took a bit more black off up with his bow just before I managed to get passed.
At Marston Doles there was a boat already setting the lock to go down and we pulled up to the water point, as someone had decided the best place to leave their boat was moored on the water point we were quite well forward. Someone had already pinned a note on his front door saying "Don't moor on water points" The motor laid beside him and the steerer walked forward to the lock asking if I was stopping for water, but not a word about pulling out as I was passing. Diana watered up while I went and helped the pair down through the first lock, for some reason Diana told the next boat they could also go ahead of us, by now there were three behind us and every one seemed to muck in working the boats down, of course we caught up with them at the next lock. Once clear of the locks we had a short run down to our moorings and with a good level in the pound got in without to much bother at about 4 pm.

I did one or two jobs to the boat including trying to get the weed hatch to seal, it does annoy me having a wet bum.
This evening we took a ride down to The Folly for a meal, the car park was pretty full and there were quite a few people there already, it was only just passed 7.30. The sell Hook Norton beer and the food was quite acceptable, at the moment they can't take credit cards, only cash or cheque's as they are still waiting for a terminal, but I will reserve judgement on what I think of the place until I have visited again, but lets say it didn't jump out and grab me.

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