And Away…

Saturday 24th January – We cruised the boat back to Wincham Bend just as the computer shop rang with an update. They’d done everything they could: most of the videos had been recovered, but sadly not all the photos or files. When Chris went in to collect it, relief quickly turned into another task altogether. Over the next few days he was buried in footage, trying to make sense of it all — none of the videos had saved in any sort of order and most had no titles at all. It became a digital jigsaw puzzle that took far longer than expected.

With fingers crossed, we decided it was time to move on to a new mooring and finally get going again. Unfortunately, boating had other ideas. About a mile in, the dreaded alternator alarm sounded once more. That was that — stuck again. Another call went into the boatyard, with promises to try and get the engineer back out to us.

Being stuck didn’t stop us making the most of the situation. We headed off for a Sunday lunch at a lovely pub about a 30-minute walk down the lane. A welcome break and a reminder that there are always small pleasures to be found, even when plans unravel.

The engineer arrived first thing the Monday morning. After talking it all through with him and the boatyard, it became clear that the alternator simply wasn’t capable of keeping up with the demands of our battery system. To be fair, the boatyard weren’t really at fault — the system had been installed by the original owner and hadn’t been set up correctly from the start. A new alternator and pulley system were ordered.

While we waited, we had to get creative with water. Two local marinas kindly allowed us to fill containers and wheel them back on a trolley. The generosity of fellow boaters and marina staff never fails to amaze us.

That same afternoon there was a knock on the door. Joe — the fellow boater who’d helped us moor up in the ice — had managed to get himself stuck, possibly on a sandbank, just ten minutes away. Although we were eager to help, it was very windy and we’d already had issues earlier trying to cast off in the high winds. Still, we quickly unhitched and went to see if we could do anything. Sadly, despite our best efforts, we couldn’t pull him free and eventually had to leave him there. Several other boaters tried too, but it wasn’t until three days later that the local marina came out with a pair of hire boats and finally got him off.

A few days later the boatyard rang to say the parts had been ordered and were due to arrive early the following week. As a gesture of goodwill, they also offered to cover 30% of the cost of the repairs and parts, which we really appreciated. They even suggested we could move up to the boatyard and hook up to electric and water while we waited — another huge weight lifted.

We spent a quiet weekend doing chores on the boat, catching up on shopping, and settling into enforced stillness.

Of course, the waiting wasn’t quite over. The parts were still delayed and, just to add to the list, Chris’ credit card decided to stop working. Cancelling it and arranging a replacement proved far more complicated than it should be when your home floats and doesn’t have a fixed address.

Finally, the engineer arrived with the parts on Wednesday Feb 4th, We’re hopeful it will be a quick job and that we’ll soon be back out on the canal. That said, we’ve also just ordered a new mattress, due to arrive tomorrow, so with a bit of luck everything will fall into place and we can move on at last — rested, repaired, and ready for whatever comes next.