Saturday 22nd September 2018



Brenda went shopping into Sawley while I stayed on the boat, waiting on Alex and doing a few jobs. I had noticed that the two engine control cables were just lying on the exhaust hospital silencer, so these were clipped clear. The engine room was looking grubby so this was cleaned and wiped. The engine room also had to be rearranged because, with extra batteries being fitted, there is less space for storage.

Alex turned up about 11am with his invoice. £865 in total. We were expecting half that again. It became clear he didn’t know where to look to solve the engine hunting and, other than giving advice about venting air from the fuel system, he didn’t want to delve into it himself.

We were fine pleased to have dropped into Alex’s lap. He was a nice, genuine guy and he has done us a nice neat job as quickly as he could.

We duly left the mooring in the marina, just as it started raining. Never mind, we had already decided we were just going to move across the river and moor on the opposite bank. After fuelling up this was exactly what we did.

The marina is owned by BWML, British Waterways Marinas Limited, and they dispense fuel using pre-delivered fuel cards. Fuel used on boats fall into two categories for tax purposes. Either a 0% tax rate for fuel used for heating only. Boats that use this either have to have a separate tank used for heating fuel only, or have no engine. Or a 60/40% split fuel, were 60% of the fuel is deemed used for transport purposes and 40% for heating, but the fuel is all stored in the same tank. As with most narrowboats, we fall into the latter. Of course fuel at 0% could be used but there is then, always a chance the revenue people could catch you.

Once we had moored up the two of us breathed a sigh of relief, it was nice to have left the marina, we had been stuck there for 10 days.

We had a large, late lunch and then went to the micropub at Sawley Lock. This is a lovely place, very friendly, a good mix of locals and boaters and good beer. Very small but this adds to its atmosphere. We were both peeved to find that we had missed a music night last night. We did see it advertised last week when we were with Aaron, but neither of us thought we would still be here, dismissed it and promptly forgot about it. Shame.  



Day Total: 0 locks; 0 miles; 0 Tunnels; 0 Boat Lift; engine running hours 2.7 (mainly for hot water)

Overall Total: 216 locks; 388 miles; 15 tunnels; 2 Boat Lifts; engine running hours 234.7


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