Leaving Stainforth

Sunday just gone was the day that we moved Misterton to Goole. To say I was excited was an understatement - I've never been on her when she's moving. I was dressed and ready to go at 7:10am, then had to wait for a while as Mary got up and we had breakfast. Mary pointed out that I could've saved even more time if I'd gone to bed wearing my clothes - a technique pioneered by my nephew Tom.

We arrived at Misterton just after 8:00am, it was already very warm. I topped up the fuel tank as it had seemed a little bit empty to me. 

Shortly afterwards Alan Pease (the boatbuilder) arrived with two friends of his Richard and Steven, these guys were brothers and between them had about 40 years of experience of barges. Richard made his first trip on the river when he was at school on Misterton, back when she was operated by Les Hill. It was great to have someone with that sort of connection help us out!

These pictures were taken by Alan after we had turned Misterton around and were going underneath the bridge.

Thats me and Richard at the front....

...and Mary and Steven doing the steering.

Mary's camera can take short videos, and she made good use of this during the day. Here is one of us just outside of Stainforth.

Leaving Stainforth from Simon Sparrow on Vimeo.

Alan had gone ahead to open the locks and bridges as we came to them. This worked really well and overall probably saved a couple of hours from the trip.

This is the first lock we came to, Bramwith lock.

This is a general shot of us going along the Stainforth and Keadby canal.

Soon we arrived at the junction with the Sheffield and South Yorkshire canal and we turned right up this towards Goole. Just after this, we approached the first aqueduct over the River Don. At ether end are large guillotine gates in case they need to isolate it for any reason.

Mary took another video, note the startled expressions on the cows faces as we accelerate away. :)

River Don from Simon Sparrow on Vimeo.

Here is a shot of the Sheffield canal, it was quite pretty.

We soon came to the first lift bridge, which Alan had opened for us. Road traffic had to wait a few minutes while we went through.

There were several bridges like this, all power operated as the Sheffield canal is still used commercially. The only other lock on the trip was Sykehouse lock.

After a while we came to junction with the Aire and Calder Navigation and turned towards Goole. This is another commercial waterway, but luckily we only had much smaller craft to contend with. As this was a wider canal, Mary and I both had a go at steering Misterton under the watchful eyes of Richard and Steven. Lets just say that a little more practice will be needed, its not as easy as a narrowboat!

Before long Goole was in sight.

 This video  is a little longer (and larger, about 17Mb), but shows the variety and number of barges still moored here.

Arriving at Goole from Simon Sparrow on Vimeo.

Finally we ended up moored alongside Hope, a Sheffield keel that we went to see last year. She's also found a new owner and will be going down south at some stage.

That was it. The end of a very hot and enjoyable day. A big thanks to Richard and Steven who helped out and told us numerous interesting stories along the way, and to Alan and Lynn for organising everything.

Visitors

I should've inculded this in the last post, but we had our first visitors (as opposed to forced labour) on Misterton last weekend! Dave who I was moored next to at Reading and his Wife Mags popped over for a look. Was great to see them and as a fellow boat owner I could freely show Dave round without fear of boring him too much.  :)

I forgot to take a picture though, maybe next time.

Moon unit 1

Happiness is an angle grinder. Or something like that.

Here I am modeling the latest in boatwear. Didn't stop me getting filthy though.

How much more can I write about rust treating? I'd better come up with something, for as the Carpenters sang 'We've only just begun'.

Mary and I spent a couple of days treating rust and clearing out more stuff. It seemed like slow work, but we're making progress.

A new event was cooking our first meal on board, and even more exciting was the use of yet another gift from my sister that had been 'stored' in the engine room of IRIS for the last year or so. Here is Mary cooking....

....and here is a close up of the BBQ action. Note the handy fire extinguisher.

Turned out to be a very nice meal. More advanced cooking next week (or maybe not.....)

Oh brother, where art thou?

Le Mans, France.

Holiday in the sun

I'd suggested to friends Mat (a.k.a. cabin boy Mat) and Brian that we go away for a weekend to catch up, as we all seem to have become busy in the past year or so. Thats how they found themselves chipping rust from the inside of Misterton's hull last saturday...

 
 

It didn't take too much time to get all the loose stuff off.

 

I've decided to use Vactan, a rust converter used in industrial applications, I'd previously used it on IRIS and it seemed to work well there. It's a rust converter that neutralises the corrosion process by converting the rust into a metallo-organic complex which passivates the surface. It then further protects the surface by forming a film with low permeability to water vapour and oxygen. Or so it says. Its good enough for the MoD anyway.

Vactan is the colour and consistency of milk to paint with, but its not so good in coffee. It goes on in a nice greeny/phosphorous sort of colour when its halfway set as shown here.

Once its cured, it turns any rust back and its ready for painting.

 

Another unforeseen activity involved boat security. A couple of the locals dropped by and told me how some kids had set Misterton adrift and they had to pull he back in and tie her up again. I'm impressed by the way people seem to be keeping an eye on things, but I did follow their suggestion and we've now chained her to the mooring as well as using ropes. One advantage of having so much junk on the boat is that you can usually find what you need. Mat set to renovating and finding keys for a couple of padlocks he found.

 

 Once this was done, Mat and Brian found some random lengths of chain and the job was done.

 

Once the guys had done that, as I was still painting, they decided to clean out some stuff from the engine room. Its full of things the previous owners no doubt felt was 'useful' such as empty oil cans, used gaskets and various containers of old fuel etc. All the tools were put into an old white box they found and we put these in the workshop for the time being.

 

This resulted in trip #16 to the Hatfield tip.

 

Once the days work was done, we retreated to the converted windmill we were staying at nearby in Fishlake. Mat bizarrely reverted to his Howard Huges/Hugh Hefner ways and was sporting this rather fetching dressing gown.

 

We spent the evening having a BBQ, much of it in the company of one of the peahens, who was the most curious bird we've seen. She even hopped onto the BBQ at one point before deciding it was a bit too warm... :)

 

After dinner we sat in the hot tub for quite some time listening to Kyuss and drinking wine. Predictably we didn't get much boat work done on sunday, but we all enjoyed watching the British GP at Silverstone, which seemed to be held in conditions you could boat in.