Off to the Nene day 1

After unloading the car and topping up with water I backed out of the moorings at 1440 hrs. in a steady breeze which I needed to turn into, but it wanted to take me sideways faster than I could bring the bow round, so I had to cheat.

We headed off towards Whittlesey where we planned to moor for the night. Just west of our moorings you will find fishing peg number one, an hour later we passed number 150, thank goodness there was no one using them.

We did pass two fishermen opposite the Meridian sign who were quite chatty and friendly. We were only making about 3 mph with quite a bit of vibration on the tiller, that could only mean one thing but it would have to wait.

Between our moorings and Whittlesey lock there are 300 fishing pegs and not a single angler on any of them, however there was one on the lock landing with his net out and all his stuff strewn about and another 3 fishing in the lock its self.

As the bottom lock gates have to be left open I could drive straight in and Diana climbed the ladder so we didn’t squish the fisherman’s gear. The ones fishing in the lock packed up and left, I didn’t see if they climbed the railings or had a key for the gate.
It takes about 80 turns to draw the top paddles and of course the same to lower them before drawing the bottom one as the lock has to be left empty with the gates open and the paddles or “Penstocks” as they are called round here down. One of the bottom paddles we couldn’t move so this slowed things down a bit. We still wound the windlass some 420 turns.

Once through the lock we moored for the night at 5 pm. on the visitor moorings by the recreation ground. Once secured I set to and removed some black polly from the prop which should improve things tomorrow, I then changed the oil and filter followed by checking the water levels in the batteries. Once that was done I was able to sit down with a glass of red and some olives.