Table and a Trip

We had a couple of weeks off over Easter and so I managed to fit in some boat work. First up was finishing the trim around the chimney from the stove where it goes through the roof, I did this using copper sheet and part of an old porthole, the final result looks quite good.

I also made a table for the wheelhouse from some of the wood I had lying around that I'd used for a worktop on my narrowboat Iris. This combined with some trailer hinges and a scaffold pole gives us a handy place to have a drink or a meal.

 

 We also took a little trip down to Weybridge, here is Misterton in Chertsey lock on the way back.

Mary took care of the ropes when we got back to our mooring.....

...while Nate and I tended to the engine. As it should be.

Its been a while

We've been busy, mainly with work but also a few other things. I did take half term off to spend some time with Mary and Nate, and of course, factored in a boat trip. We didn't go far, just down the river to Laleham, but it was a nice break.

  Nate has become fairlt obsessed with the steering wheel and gear lever, in fact he won't happily leave the boat of a morning unless he's checked them both out.

I did add something to the engine on our hols, its an overload pawl for the fuel rack in the injector pump. Basically you can swing it out of the way to allow more fuel for cold starts, but it then drops down to prevent overfueling under normal operation. Our engine was missiing it, so it was good to get one. It was obtained from marine power services. Here are the bits...

...and here it is installed.

That's all for now!

New Year

Another year has come and gone, we decided to celebrate New Year in a river-style by going on a little trip. On New Years eve we set off, togther with Hannh, Ed and Harry in 'Jenner' to go a little way upriver for a change of scene. Jenner is shown below leaving her mooring.

 I should point out in fairness that the only reason we're in front in the picture above is that we're the slower boat, so Ed is waiting for us to get to the lock.

At Bell Weir we managed to get both boats in with plenty of room to spare.

 

 We only went as far as the Runnymeade park which is about 500 yards upriver of the lock. Once there we cracked open some bubbly while the boys played in the back deck area of Jenner.

We rounded out the afternoon by trekking to a pub, which was further away and muddier than we had thought. We did see some fireworks at midnight, but the best display by far was the one we saw on TV down by the London Eye.

The next day saw us joined by Mat, who put his 1000-yard stare to good use at the bow. Until it started to rain when we all just stood inside the wheelhouse.

A lovely couple of days was rounded off once back at the mooring by being snug inside, whiskey in hand and 'The Eagle has Landed' on the box.

Fog

We took a little trip up to Bell Weir lock on sunday, joined by friends Hannah and Ed and their son Harry. I was thinking that the day would brighten up, so we set off into the gloom. By the time we got there it was no better, but no worse.

Nate and Harry took it in their stride, as long as they had food and drink they were happy.

 The fog got worse on the way back, but luckily there were few other boats out, so we made it back without incident.

Better than sunday afternoon TV anyway.

Family outing

Last saturday was the designated day to empty the waste tank. It didn't really need doing, but as the river isn't in flood and the weather was good it seemed like a nice excuse for a trip. My mum and dad had come along for their first trip out on Misterton. Normally we go to Datchet where a hireboat company is, but they were closed for the weekend. So we went to Penton Hook just down the river from us. This is the biggest inland marina in the UK, full of nice expensive (and fragile) cruisers. So it was not without some trepidation we set out, but it was out of season so the river was pretty quiet.

After transiting Penton Hook lock, we doubled back on ourselves and took the winding channel to the marina. Luckily one of the pumpouts is at the marina entrance, so we didn't need to go too far in and a helpful woman on a moored barge caught the mooring line from us.

      

 We then had to walk around to the marina office. As I said, Its a big place, and although I took this photo from about 100 feet away, we had to walk over half a mile round the marina perimeter to get there. I let the others go ahead without me and got a nice family photo.

 After lunch we turned around and headed away, I got a little too close to a weir at one point (Misterton has a lot of inertia round tight turns) but I passed it off to mum and dad as the chance to see some wildfowl close up.

Nate had a brief stint in his lifejacket while on deck, but as usual watched most of the trip from his carseat.

Finally, a nice picture of three generations of my family.

 All in all, a lovely day out. Lets hope the river stays quiet over the winter.