More Ice
Yes, the novelty has yet to wear off. You didn't get this on the Thames I can tell you.

A thicker layer of ice has formed overnight, so I went for a walk around and took a few pictures. I like the one of the birds and their swimming hole the best. :)

The bridge over the entrance to the basin looked pretty...

The whole marina is frozen in as well (the canal is also frozen over, but less interesting in terms of a picture).

Here is IRIS from the bank opposite. Note how low in the water she is. Guess I like my cars low and my boats lower....

Here is the side, I can now fret about the quality of insulation based on the frost patterns on the side. Don't know why, its toasty inside. :)

Finally, some ducks that I fed this morning...

Ice Station IRIS?

I've been awake since about 4:00am today - insomnia seems to be a trait in my family - musing on the big questions of life.(why are we here, does God exist, do I have anything in for breakfast?)Part of the reason for staying awake was the constant creaking and groaning of what I guessed to be ice against the side of the hull.

Seeing as it was the middle of the night, many other possibilities presented themselves, such as we'd been cast adrift, or that all the water had drained from the canal and we were aground. I thought about getting up to investigate, but discounted this on the the grounds of it being cold and being dark. I did toy with the idea of waking Mary up and getting her to go and have a look, but I'm nothing if not wise when it comes to the ladies, and I could see that this would not go down well......

Anyhoo, here is a photo of a thin skim of ice at about 7:30am this morning. From all the noise it was making, I was assuming massive icebergs, so frankly, I'm a little disappointed. :)

Shelves...
Been a busy couple of weeks with work in London, socialising and getting sick (no, not a hangover...). The most significant bit of recent boat work has been the construction of some shelves to go by the bed space. They didn't come out too badly and give me somewhere to put the alarm clock if nothing else.

With the front steps in place it looks like this.....

Not much else to report really, there are a few more jobs to be done, but given the time of year with the weather and the pre-christmas social scene, I haven't had time during the weekends to crack on with much.

Ranking
Whist reading some of the other boating blogs, such as Bones, I realised that there is a bit of competition in terms of the top 100 boating sites.

I'll have a bit of that action, so there is a new counter thing in the side bar. It seems to only work off unique queries, so there is no point me sitting here refreshing my browser, I'll just have to be patient (not always easy....). Of course I may get bored soon and remove it, we'll see.

Current ranking? 293 :)

Update! Now at 179 - legend in my own mind......

And so to Venice
Little Venice that is. Since moving IRIS to Willowtree Marina in september, I haven't had the chance to take her out. So this weekend it was the inaugural trip into London. I've been looking forward to this for some time, since I first saw the canal boats in Little Venice a few years ago.

Mary and I set off late on saturday morning, it is meant to take about 3 hours to get there, but I wanted to leave a bit of margin for error. The day was sunny and pleasant, with the leaves turning. As a bonus in this shot, can you spot the heron?

The trip took us through a variety of landscapes, some of it surprisingly pretty considering we're in a city.

A novelty was the aqueduct over the North Circular road (A406), I like the idea that IRIS was momentarily suspended like a 16 ton sword of Damocles over the unsuspecting motorists below.

The closer we got to the heart of the city, the more we saw a variety of interesting buildings along the way.

We made it to Little Venice. I was actually expecting to go on and moor in Paddington Basin, given the popularity of the place, but just as we were going by the visitors moorings, a boat left, so we nipped into the space left. Here is IRIS at the mooring for the night.

...and here is a more general view.

We left IRIS there for the night and went back to North London, via a couple of pubs to watch the fireworks at Alexandra Palace.
The next day we were joined by friends Helen and Greg (veterans of the Newbury trip) and Helen's parents Jan and Michael. Michael is ex-merchant navy and is a pilot for a UK port, so I was happy to let him take over steering duties for the first half of the trip. Greg steered for the second half, giving me the chance to strut up and down the deck in what I hope was a Nelson-like manner.

This shot shows Greg at the helm, with Michael and I waiting for any paparazzi that might be lurking.

Here we are going over the North Circ again...

One constant theme of London boating seems to be the urban jellyfish, or Tescos carrier bag. On the trip down we had to try and clear the prop a couple of times to remove debris, and finally when moored up I got a chance to use the weedhatch for the first time. I was quite pleased with the amount of rubbish around the propellor, as it did explain why the boat seemed to struggling.

We made it back just after dark, using the light on the front of IRIS. Now I know I can moor at night, all sorts of nocturnal missions are on the cards.

Finally, people sometimes use the expression 'ducks in a row' which I find faintly annoying. I couldn't organise ducks, but how about some geese?