Sunday 16 Dec 2012 Popham’s Eau

First an apology, I have had to turn on the anti spam verification on the feedback page of the blog. I hate these things trying to guess what the wobbly word is but the level of spam has built up to such a level over the past week or so it has become a real pain.

 

Right as you have probably guessed we are back out on Harnser. We did visit her last week to drain all the water and check the mooring lines. Talking to some of the moorers it seems that the water level was up over the walkway but a couple of the moorers when out every few hours including through the night to check every ones boat was safe.

We arrived just after lunch time and after filling everything with water including the main tank we were off by 1315 hrs. heading towards March. The weather was grand with a gentle breeze and warm sunshine, it was so nice that we decided to continue on through March and investigate the moorings opposite the wind farm.

Just beyond the railway bridge the land owner looks to be extending his moorings and has scraped all the bank undergrowth away and installed a short length of piling.

Not only has he done the section in front of his bungalow but he has also carried on to the east as far as the radio mast.

We were expecting to drag through this bit of the river as the level looked well down when we left the moorings but we had no problem at all.
Once by the wind farm I slowed down to moor against the small landing platform opposite the first wind generator but Diana who was standing on the bow well away from the engine said that she could hear the generator quite plainly so we continued on leaving the sun falling towards the water behind us.

I knew that there was another small landing stage by the first bridge down Popham Eau which runs off the river to the right at the other end of the wind farm. By the time we turned down Popham Eau the sun was getting really low and with the lack of sun it was feeling decidedly cool and on turning it was time to put a coat and gloves on. As we approached the bridge I turned as the waterway narrows through the bridge and then backed down to the landing stage. With our bows against the landing stage the stern just came in by the piling around the bridge abutments, luckily for us there had been a hole bored it the top of one of the piles which I could thread the stern mooring line through. This is not piling like you get along the canal towing path but steel sheets about 250 mm wide and 5mm thick, so there is no chance of our mooring rope damaging it.
We were tucked up a little before four o’clock and went for a short walk, it was still quite light with a clear blue sky and the thinnest crescent of a moon.