Friday 2 November 2012 The Ship

Last night was just magical with a bright moon and loads of stars. The moon and Jupiter were very close and right in the middle of Taurus, if its clear tonight go and have a look. This morning was bright sunshine and at 9 am the moon was still visible in the pale blue sky.

We set off at 1025 hrs. heading down towards Reach Lode. They have been re-profiling the bank along side Wicken Lode and sowing it with grass seed, but it will be some time before its fit to walk on. at the moment its like soggy bulb fibre.

At the end of the Lode we passed under the wooden bridge and onto Reach Lode, turning hard right down to Reach Lock. We were slightly delayed at the lock as we both had problems trying to unlock the control boxes. The EA Ably keys look good but the locks on the panels and water point boxes are rubbish.

Once through the lock it was another right turn round the gardens of the Five Miles from Anywhere pub and down the River Cam to Popes Corner. Imray Guide goes on about the Fish and Duck pub being recently refurbished and under new ownership. Today there is no trace of it, just a small marine that is about to be refurbished its self. The Cam is a meandering river with very wide flood plains on the inside of most of the bends.

We were now back on the Gt Ouse, I rang the lock keeper at Denver to check the lock times for the next few days. Sunday gives us a 21 ft. tide at about 10 in the morning, after this they get progressively smaller, so we are planning to catch the Sunday morning locking. We saw one or two boats around the Ely area but not much after that.
We didn’t have any rain today but we did see a rainbow ahead of us at Littleport.

At the Little Ouse we turned right yet again to go down to The Little Ouse moorings to fill with £180 worth of diesel. We last filled up on the Grand Union and the heating has been on 24/7 since then. No sooner were we tied up and read to take diesel than Danny jumped aboard and started examining our paint work with his microscope like this one. It was amazing looking at the micro blisters in my paint work through this and also to see how the paint surface was cracked and crazed. Next came the electronic coating thickness gauge which showed that my paintwork was applied to a good thickness.
By the time we were finished it was nearly 4 pm. so we winded using just the flow of the river to take the bows round 180° while Danny held our stern steady with a rope, we fairly flew down to the junction with the Gt Ouse again where we moored at the EA moorings by The Ship.