It’s the 25th of February and on this bright but cold day, we have left the marina to start our continuous cruising for 2023.
Marina Exit.
Our plans for the next couple of weeks are quite simple, the first task was, over a couple of days, to cruise into Chester city centre. We spent our first night outside The Cheshire Cat hotel/pub, a mooring we have used several times before.
We are going to Chester to order some new specs for Sue, she took a tumble on her bike and mangled her old ones.
Two black eyes and (we now think) a broken nose - ouch!!
This could take up to two weeks as we like Zeiss Lenses which are ground and finished in Germany and so take longer than lenses ground and finished in this country. When we arrived at the optician the young lady assistant asked if she could see the old glasses. She disappeared out the back of the shop with them. Some while later she reappeared, “ . . .I’ve managed to fix them” she said, “they should be OK now . . .”.
Well, that was a lot of money and two weeks hanging about saved.
We spent a couple of days in Chester stocking up on cheese and other goodies, at last getting around to visiting the New Chester Market, what a strange place. One butcher, one fishmonger a sprinkling of arty tarty stalls and dozens of arty tarty “street food” stalls. To be fair the food stalls all seemed to be doing good business with plenty of punters having lunch but nothing appealed to us. Oh yes!! There was one other stall, a guy selling glasses, you provided a prescription, selected your frames and they were produced to your prescription within one hour. The cost started around £50.00. Tthis stall also seemed to be busy.
Chester City centre moorings
Most of the electronics on Fantasma were replaced or upgraded when the solar system was installed but didn’t replace the old and frankly undersized battery charger. It was a cheap, cheerful model that struggled to charge the boat’s bank of five batteries. After much thought, we decided to replace it and our old inverter with a Victron 1600va charger/inverter. While we were at it, I wanted to change the EpEver MTTP solar controller to a Victron 100/30 SmartSolar MPPT Charge Controller/Regulator, this installation was to take place at Chas Harden Boatyard, Beeston Lock Wharf.
We were enjoying our time back out on the cut when the weather took a definite turn for the worse. We woke one morning to a clear bright sky, a couple of inches of snow and a weather forecast that foretold more heavy snowfalls and temperatures that could plunge to -5˚C or lower.
A cold morning cruise.
Deciding we could manage without getting frozen in for what could have been a week or more and while the sun, however weak, was out we went back into Tattenhall Marina for another seventeen days during which the electronics engineer came to us to install the new kit while we kept toasty warm and the forecast freezing weather failed to materialise.
Our second attempt to leave was on Monday 27th March, it was warm and dry and we had just 3.5 miles and one lock to go to where we planned to moor for the night.
Just below Beeston Iron Lock.
This year we are determined not to rush around as we had often done in the past. We do have an extensive programme for the year but in no way is it set in stone, in fact, it has already been changed twice and we are only one day in.
The original plan was to leave the marina and travel to Liverpool, explore the city for a week or so before continuing along The Leeds Liverpool Canal to the Rufford Branch, where we would transit the Ribble Link to explore the Lancaster Canal. After recrossing the Ribble Link we would continue along The Leeds Liverpool Canal.
The first problem was the Eurovision Song Contest, traditionally hosted by the previous year's winner. Last year was Ukraine who obviously can’t be the host this year so Liverpool was selected to host in Ukraine's stead. The CRT (Canal and River Trust) have informed us that all transits through The Liverpool Link and moorings in Salthouse Dock are booked solid until after the event and we will not be able to book a transit and mooring until June at the earliest.
Oh well, we will do the Ribble Link and the Lancaster first and go to Liverpool after. Unfortunately, I would not want to attempt the Ribble Link without at least one other experienced helms person on board. Pal Mark who has helped many times before wants to accompany us but is unlikely to be available till June.
Not a huge problem, we will leave those sections and return to them at some future date.
The “latest" first section
The work upgrading the electronics was carried out while we were in the marina which saved us two nights out of the marina that we had already paid for. George came to us, replaced the battery charger and inverter to a combined charger and inverter unit and replaced the cheap Chinese MPPT solar controller with a top-range Victron unit.
We left the marina five days ago and have travelled a grand total of six miles so our determination to slow down is working although as the spring gets properly underway and the winds get lighter and the temperatures get higher I expect we will speed up.