Thursday 16^th May 2019

We had a busy day of maintenance and jobs today. I walked over to the chandlery only to find that the paint had been delivered to the New and Used Boat Company yesterday but for some reason they hadn’t passed it on despite speaking to the woman who had actually signed for it. Neither I, nor the chandlery owner were best pleased and there was a fair few shamed faces.

Quite a few of the scratches had first to be sanded and primed before the side could be painted. The boat always looks so much better when the blackening has been touched up and personally, I don’t understand boat owners that don’t do this.

The engine room was wiped out. Virtually every time it rains the drain from the weed hatch cover blocks and water overflows into the engine room which is really annoying. Also started making up the platform for the coal on the roof.

The bathroom door has never closed properly and springs open if not bolted on the inside. I found that all it took to remedy this was to chisel out some wood from the catch so the ball engages better. Trouble is now, the door closes so firmly that the whole bulkhead moves when the door is pushed open. This might rectify itself or else require more work.

Brenda had a very frustrating morning arranging for an Asda delivery tomorrow. The system wouldn’t allow her to change the delivery address and every time she rang the help desk she got a foreigner that barely spoke English. In the afternoon she took down the lights in the front cratch that had stopped working and fixed up some new sets.

We hadn’t seen much of each other so met up in the cratch at 5:30. The sun was shining and it should have been a lovely view but a boat had moored right ahead of us. We watched a family of newly hatched Mallards and saw a 15” pike slowly moving down the canal on the surface passing within a few feet of the boat.

And listened to those bloody crows.

Weather: another glorious day.