Narrowboat Tranquillity

I have just heard that our new narrowboat which is to be launched at the beginning June is to be called Tranquillity. This was my second choice of name so I am not too disappointed. My first choice was Voyager. I loved the Star Trek TV series of Voyager and I thought it apt as a narrow boat name. Oh well! When I get my very own boat I can then choose what I want. I did however get my first choice of livery. It will be painted Dark Blue, Red and Cream. Our first cruise starts on the 19th June for two weeks from Heritage Marina near Kidsgrove on the Macclesfield canal. I still have not finalised our route yet as I am torn between doing the Cheshire Ring or going to Burton on Trent. The reason for Burton on Trent is because my Great Grandmother was born there and to be able to combine two of my passions, genealogy and canals sounds irresistible.

Upstairs windows being fitted

Laptop Woes

I did a silly thing recently; because my laptop was running quite slowly, I decided to wipe the hard drive and start a new installation of windows millennium. After the reformat, I discovered that I couldn’t get it to read from the CD rom because it is an external USB CD rom. The startup disk would have set up a normal CD rom but not a USB port! I am sure I wasn’t ever the first person ever to have come across this problem so I scoured the internet for 3 days but could not find an answer. I did find something called duse.exe which when I set it up in my config.sys file allowed me to read from CD in Dos. The problem was that this duse is then in memory and there was then insufficient memory left over to run the windows setup. I searched the internet again and again but could not find a solution. There were very many similar questions asked on various website but no answers. I then had a brainwave (doesn’t happen very often!) If I could load Duse.exe to read the CD rom and copy the entire CD as an image to drive C then I could reboot without Duse.exe freeing the memory and hopefully then setup windows directly from drive C. Trouble was I didn’t have a full dos system only the files on the start floppy disks but a search on the internet found xxcopy16 which did the trick. It took about an hour to copy all the CD to drive C, and then I modified config.sys to remove Duse.exe. Booted from floppy and run setup from Drive C with no problems. It did the trick too my laptop is now behaving at normal speed.

A different perspective.

Bonny 1995 - 2005

I have put this posting off for a week because it upsets me to think about it. Before our recent trip to England, our little dog Bonny was a little unwell; the neighbour looking after our dogs during our visit had to take her to the vet as she suddenly couldn’t walk. The neighbour called us in England and we cut short our trip and returned. We fought to save her, giving her around the clock care. Carrying her everywhere and seeing to all her needs. She seemed to respond and eventually started walking again but was on hefty drugs. Then last Saturday all of a sudden again she went downhill fast and died next morning. The vet still doesn’t know what caused it, he did all the tests and it all came up negative. All he could think of was a degeneration of the central nervous system. We buried her in front of our new log cabin where we visit her every day. There have been many tears as we had Bonny for more than 10 years from being a six week old bundle of fluff. Bonny was a huge part of our family and we miss her terribly.

Last of the sidings going on front Gable

2nd of 4 gables having sidings fitted.

First gable siding complete.

The first sidings going on on the Gable

Alice! Who the ____ is Alice?

Our recent week-end narrowboat hire was a bit of a disaster! We found the boatyard easy enough, Claymoore Navigation at Preston Brook, by using my autoroute 2001 and my laptop. We hired nb Alice at fairly short notice, a two berth smallish boat. We were dismayed to find her looking very shabby both inside and out. We were originally intending to go up to Lymm and then on to Worsley as we had to be in Worsley for dad’s 80th birthday party which we thought was at midday. This would have meant a dash back at top speed to get the boat back in time for Monday morning. We then found out it was an evening meal so we had to change our plans. Ignoring the state of the boat and determined to enjoy it anyway, we set off southwards through Preston Brook tunnel where we had to wait until the appointed hour before southbound could go through. We followed a private narrowboat through but it was going so slow, I could hardly steer Alice. Through the tunnel we arrived at Dutton stop lock, the very first lock that Diane had ever tackled and mine for a number of years. As the fall was only a few inches, this made it a very easy introduction for Diane as she was doing the locking whilst I controlled the boat. We then were faced with Saltersford Tunnel which was a bit unnerving as you can’t see through it and there are no timings to get you through without meeting an oncoming boat. I realized half way through that I should have used the horn to signal that I was coming through it but we were lucky. Barnton Tunnel was no problem as you could see through it even though it was much longer than Saltersford Tunnel. We passed by the Anderton boat lift but were put off the area by the huge chemical works. The scenery got better as we cruised further and delighted to see both Kingfishers and Heron. As we approached Northwich we went just past Broken Cross Bridge when we noticed a canalside pub, it was getting late so we moored just a bit further up past the pub. Before our showers, I turned on the central heating which after a few minutes blew up with steam and hot water cascading down the inside of the boat. This drenched the carpet which hadn’t been cleaned for I don’t know how long as it became muddy! Oh well, shower pub, pint, pub meal, bed. Woke early next morning to find Alice in the middle of the canal and both our lines adrift! I got the engine going and managed to get back alongside the towpath to find both our mooring spikes had been pinched. The boat next to us had one spike missing also but the thief mustn’t have been able to get the other one out or was disturbed. I hailed the occupant who was also unaware of the dastardly deed but as we had nothing to moor with, I set off to find a bollard to tie up to. We found a wooden post a bit further up to which we tied up, this allowed us to get ready for the rest of the day. I searched my Nicholsons guide to find a boatyard was nearby so we went there tied up and waited for half an hour until it opened and paid ₤11-50 for two new mooring spikes. With the lesson learned about mooring in public places, we headed on to Middlewich Kings lock, downed a couple of Tetleys bitter in the pub, turned around at the winding hole just beyond and headed back towards Preston Brook. Our second night was at a beautiful quiet spot between bridges 176 and 177 with the river Dane below us. Spag Bog, bottle of Rioja, bed. The bed had to be made up and once up, it was impossible to do anything in the lounge of the boat. Got up in the night to pee and discovered the still muddy carpet on my feet. Got back to Preston Brook by midday Sunday and told them of the problems to which they just shrugged as if it didn’t matter. Diane said it was the most uncomfortable time and if it had been our first hire, it would have put her off boating forever! Luckily we had hired before with none of these problems and a comfortable bed at Viking Afloat from Whitchurch on the Llangollen

Me on the cut last week. South of Preston Brook

Finally finished roof tiling