Familiar Mooring

Another cold start to the day which became eve more apparent once the foam bungs were removed from the double glazed Houdini hatch in the ceiling.

That’s not opaque glass! There was a rather heavy frost last night.  The canal had a layer of ice on the surface which extended from the centreline to the far bank.  We decided to wait for the ice to melt before moving and as a consequence didn’t start cruising until 11am.  Bad weather was forecast for 3pm which gave us a four hour window to move.

Jan has a bad cough and sensibly stayed inside for most of the cruise.  Son took the tiller which left me free to do the locks.  We encountered a number of patches of thin ice during the cruise.  It wasn’t very thick; about 5mm.  However Jan subsequently told us even breaking ice this thin was quite noisy from inside the boat.

There was a brief stop at Wheelock whilst we topped up the water tank (good pressure from the tap).  We continued on to the southern outskirts of Sandbach where we moored for the day.  This is exactly the same mooring we used when we were heading south three weeks ago. 

I took the opportunity to check whether the ice had caused any damage to the two pack blacking.

No!  Everything looks fine. 

Jan had been busy in the galley.  We are having leek & potato soup with freshly baked bread for dinner tonight.  She also cooked my favourite steamed pudding on the top of the diesel stove during the cruise.  A pity I have to share it with the son !

Yum………..