January 5th 2021 - Well that did not take long. Just five days into the new year and England is in full lockdown.
The marina has shut the gate and only those living on their boats, around 28 people, are allowed in and out. The chandlery is closed although diesel, gas and coal are still available via the office which remains open although on restricted hours.
January slowly turned to February and the Covid cases have started to decrease although Boris is saying that any release from lockdown must come slowly. This must surely be as he will not be able to get the English people to endure a fourth lockdown. Still with the immunisation programme seemingly on track perhaps we can all look forward to better times to come. My first jab, given on Monday 8th February, was a model of organisation and professionalism and Sue’s on the 16th, equally so. What a pity our politicians aren’t the same.
February 19th 2021 - It’s been a long few weeks. We’ve done lots of jobs on the boat from making and installing a knife rack to replacing all the horrible wood curtain poles with lovely solid brass ones (but no new curtains yet). Probably the most significant task has been making and installing an electric control panel that allows us to run all our entertainment equipment, TV, internet router, radio, hard drives etc using the 12 volt system, not the prettiest but it all works. I've instaled a solar panel “gizmo” that enables me to monitor exactly what the solar system is doing at any particular time via my phone and/or tablet which together with the battery monitor (also monitored via computer devices|) should enable us to maintain the batteries in such a way that we can (perhaps with the help of the engine when sunshine is scarce) be independent of the National Grid.
February 22nd 2021 - As everyone in UK knows by now Boris announced his plans to release England from lockdown today.
February 23rd 2021 - Well it appears no one is satisfied with Boris, half the population thinks he is moving too slow and the other half that he is moving too fast. Time will tell who is right and with that observation I will try never to mention Boris or Covid again (till the next time - Editor}
Monday 8th March 2021 - We will soon start planning our very first narrowboat adventure based on our understanding of the rules, as they currently stand :-
“ . . . There is no change until Step 1 part 2, potentially from 29 March, when it is anticipated that the official stay at home order will end but people will be encouraged to stay local. Limited local boat movement may be possible . . . “ ” . . . only those living aboard are permitted to make an overnight stay . . . “
“ . . . In Step 2, from no earlier than 12 April, holiday lets are expected to reopen. We believe that at this point cruising can be done freely and overnight stays on boats and holiday hire boating will be allowed, as long as you are one household or support bubble. The boat movement suspension will be lifted (with boats required again to move every 14 days) . . . “
“ . . . In Step 3, from no earlier than 17 May, indoor mixing on your boat will be allowed with up to six people or, if it is more people, two households . . .” (source - Canal & River Trust)
So after the 17th May everything will be back to normal(ish) but for how long; “experts” are saying there will be another spike in the autumn. We will wait and see, in the meantime the planning will commence.
18th March 2021 - The swan neck (the metal link between the rudder post and tiller arm) and tiller on RoJo was made in one piece but as we have ordered a stern cover we decided to get this altered to make the raising and lowering of the stern cover easier. It was not a job I could tackle but the marina engineering staff did a magnificent job and at a cost around £100.00 less than anticipated - happy days.
19th March 2021 - We have been very pleased with the e-bikes we bought a couple of years ago and were looking forward to bringing them to the boat to use as transport from the boat to the local shops etc., etc. There is someone here with a very similar bike so we measured it to see if we could in anyway get it on board? No we could not, so how on earth would we get two of them on board. We are not much into walking so e- bikes are, we think, essential so we have bought a couple of folders Whisper 806’s, they still take up a lot of room but that is manageable. The comfy, easy to ride, big bikes they sadly are not.
20th March 2021 - Still more jobs jobbed. I installed a new 12 volt fridge but getting rid of the old one was a nightmare. Recycle centres in Warwickshire are currently open Saturday and Sunday and only by prebooked appointment to local residents who can prove local status with a council tax bill. Fortunately the supplier of the new fridge agreed (at no cost to us) to dispose of the old one.
21st March 2021 - UK Census Day, We missed the last one as we were not in UK at the time so thought we should try to be part of this one, but how?
As we undersood it this census was primarily to be done on-line although provision was made for those without access to the internet that needed to use a paper form. There were also supposed to be ways for those without a permenant postcode to complete the questionnaire, but judging by the comments on narrowboating social media of those who tried it was not easy. Also not easy was contacting the census.gov office by phone. Some people on the marina had been trying for days, waiting on hold for hours and getting nowhere. With the census having no carrot but the threat of a £1000 fine for non completion as a bloody great stick we thought we would try to contact them by phone - yeah!! on census day itself, thats going to be easy - well as it happens it was. Just a half hour wait and we were speaking to an advisor. "Don’t worry", she said, if you live on a canal a roving enumerator will find you in the next few days and give you everything you need to complete and if you don’t get someone knocking within a few days give us a ring back and we will sort it. Well that sounded easy and we could at least say we tried.
An hour later we were driving into town (to get essential supplies - they were essential, honest) when in a lay-by close to a bridge over the Oxford Canal we saw a couple of people getting out of a car wearing reflective jackets and with large ID badges hanging round thier necks. I stopped and asked if they were census people. They were. I explained our situation and asked if they could sort us, they could and did marking our postcode as XXX XXX and our status as “Itinerant Boat Dwellers” in their computer. They gave us a 16 digit code which enabled us to fill the census on line and avoid a whack with the big stick.
24th March 2021 - We are tidying up getting ready for when Boris says we can move. Most of the jobs are jobbed so we are trying to put things in good places for travelling as we want to be able to get up and go, unlike when caravanning which was get up and spend an hour or two packing things away before moving.
To this end we had taken out the rear steps and moving the tools when I decided to do one of the few remaining purchase survey tasks left to complete :-
“ . . . 5. The cabin bilge has no access. An access hatch should be added into the aft cabin to allow checking of the cabin bilge for damp (A) . . . . (A) Advisory - A defect that should be addressed and certainly monitored to ensure it becomes no worse. You should follow the advice given . . . “
With the steps removed it was an easy job to cut a rectangular hole in the laminate flooring with the multi tool and then with the largest hole saw I had cut two large holes in the 25mm thick marine ply floor and then join them together with the jigsaw to create a 200mm x 65mm oval access that could be neatly covered by the piece of laminate floor I had first cut.
Have you ever started a job and wished you hadn’t? Don’t they say that “ignorance is bliss”?
Looking down the hole I had created I couldn’t see the base plate. All I could see was water. Out came the hand pump and nearly 180 litres (40 gallons) later the bilge was, if not dry, empty. The question of course is where did it come from?
It is possible we bought the bilge water with the boat but we are hoping that it is the result of two shower leaks we have had since living on board. The first may have been leaking for some while and did not come to light until a pipe became disconnected spraying water in all directions and the second (from the same pipe) was discovered while looking for something else. If that is the case over the next days the amount of water collecting at the low point under my new inspection hatch that I am mopping dry on a daily basis will get less and less and eventually dry up. If it continues over a period of time we will have to start searching fo another pipe leak - not an easy task.
25th March 2021 - The bilge did have water in it this morning but was it the remains of the original stuff still dribbling through and collecting at the lowest point or some new dribbling in from where? Alan one of our neighbours suggested that if there was a leak between the pump and the taps the pump would operate in a random fashion often running without a tap being opened and if the pump did not operate in that random way any leak would be between the water tank and the pump. Using this advise we checked the part of the system between tank and pump.
The space containing the pump and it’s associated equipment is not for the claustrophobic or inflexible. One has to lay on the floor of the bedroom and then shuffle leftwards and forward via a 400mm (16”) high X 550mm (22”) access hatch into the storage space (see sketch) before you can turn off the water at the main valve and access the pump which I quickly discovered was leaking, not a huge amount but a significant amount. It took just a half hour to remove the pump, an hour to get to the nearest stockist, buy a replacement and get back then another half hour to fit the replacement. I hope it was that easy and will be checking the bilge carefully over the coming days to confirm that hope.