Even with the clocks going forward we still managed to get away from home in good time. The traffic was very light but the weather very dull with drizzle mist and low cloud, nothing like the past few days, it did start to pick up about 3pm as we chugged along and now its quite nice.
The boat wasn’t covered in red dust like we had at home but was quite cool at about 11deg. The first job was to fit a none return valve just after the water pump, we have had problems with the pump firing up because the system is losing pressure and I strongly suspect this is going back through the pump valves. That done it was down to unpacking the car and having a bit of lunch before setting off.
Just like last time as soon as we untied a boat started to come in through the marina entrance but this time they didn’t come down passed us but swung round towards the pub so I just held back a few minutes. Once out of the marina we turned left towards Tamworth, the canal was very quiet and we didn’t meet another boat until we approached Glascote Locks where a boat was just coming up in the top lock, so putting both of them right for us, they even left the top paddle of the bottom lock up so even that didn’t leak off at all. Once clear of the locks we pushed on to Fazeley Junction where we have moored for the night.
One of the jobs I need to do is change the top tiller bearing, The boss is a taper fit on the rudder shaft and can be a real pig to remove so a friend knocked me up a simple puller to put weight on it while I jar the boss with a big hammer. Today was a dummy fitting run to see if it fit but unfortunately the bolts I bought were too short and are only on by one thread, easy to fix.
I also soaked the inside of the boss with plusgas as its well rusty. I also managed to remove the two Allen screws that clamp the bearing on the shaft. Next trip hopefully I can change the bearing, I have done it once before and it was a pig.
Todays Journey3½ miles 2 Locks in 1¾ hours
The Google map of the entire journey to date can be seen at https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=17mjw4LFpTYhyPS1NB_mGzeZAr913Rivl&usp=sharing
You can also see our planned itinerary at https://canalplan.uk/journey/16879_cp
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