I am sitting in the bow of the boat on a camping chair under the cratch cover because I am just too hot to be in the sitting area! R stoked the fire to get it hot enough to cook our pizza. (this is my own narrowboat MasterChef moment and it was an experiment that worked well!) I put a metal trivet on the stove top (having learnt my lesson earlier today heating a mincepie without said trivet resulting in an exceedingly black bottom!) and laid on that some reusable parchment paper and then the pizza. I upended a small deep metal baking tray over the top and left the pizza to heat through. The cheese melted and it was delicious and no soggy bottom ala bakeoff. Am having such fun experimenting with novel ways of cooking food on the wood burner.
Our speedy supper followed a lovely lengthy Zoom call with our friends from Ireland, again sitting under the cratch because that’s where we get the strongest internet signal. Now we are set to watch a film recommended to R by his new best friend, Mir who came on the boat yesterday with her mum and dad and we took them for a cruise along the cut. A big Abba fan, she bluetoothed her phone to the speaker in the lid of my thermos flask (what will they think of next!) and we enjoyed some nostalgic music. Mir has autism and it was her first time on a narrowboat so she was very excited until the rain came and she got a bit cold. She went inside and chatted to R and she recommended ‘Life-Size’, a film all about Barbie doll coming to life. R has tried unsuccessfully to find it so last night we ended up watching a gritty film called ‘The Unforgivable’ with Sandra Bullock. I found it disturbing, but good and it made a difference from the pink and fluffy Christmas movies we’ve subjected ourselves to recently!
Yesterday afternoon we went to Leamington Spa to find some sticky backed battery lights – some areas of the boat could do with being illuminated and I was in search of a few more bits and bobs to get the storage on the boat as organised as possible. Leamington Spa has some very attractive houses, many of them Georgian, and an extensive shopping area although House of Fraser looked incredibly dejected as shoppers looked for last minute bargains before it closes down. Another covid casualty? Carluccio’s had an outside seating area so we treated ourselves to a piece of delicious chocolate and orange polenta cake – worth every calorie and one of my five a day. I managed on returning to the boat to use both the washer and dryer without putting the money into the wrong slot machine so that’s progress!
Today after church I decided to check the engine on the boat and found the area to be rather wet, hardly surprising with the volume of rainfall yesterday and no effective tonneau cover to protect the stern. R switched on the bilge pump to remove the dirty water from the bottom of the hull (it works automatically when we are cruising along) and nothing happened although it made enough noise to reassure us that it is semi working. It may be blocked but R was unable to take it apart and I was slightly concerned seeing him fiddling in the dirty part of the boat dressed in his best Sunday jacket and tie! So that’s tomorrow’s first job – it may require a new bilge pump. I am beginning to understand why boats sink money.
Received an email out of the blue from a lady, T, who found my blog on the internet as she was googling ‘Windrose’, our boat from last year. She is hoping to buy it (I didn’t even know it was for sale!) but is concerned at the lack of paper trail with the boat. Apparently the current owners haven’t got a lot of boat information to share with T who is becoming concerned about the purchase, not only because of a poor surveyor’s report but, in addition, finding and reading my blog and all the challenges we faced. Did I think it was a good buy? Such a difficult question. Narrowboats are emotive. You know when you find the one you want (when I told this to one of our long-standing friends, he likened it to when I met R and just knew I wanted to marry him!) and really you buy on faith because you have no idea when things are going to start going wrong (could be another marriage analegy!). You hope the boat has been well maintained and it’s recommended to have a surveyor’s report but as they cover their backs constantly you have to read behind the lines of what they are actually saying. I think the best advice we were given was checking we had a solid, rust free hull and an engine that runs well.
Grateful for the dry afternoon as I had to do various outside boat measurements in preparation for the covers we are having made on the bow and the stern as they will optimise the areas of living space we can utilise. With the ‘up and over’ stern cover it has been strongly recommended we never cruise with it up – many a framework has been irreparably damaged going under an unexpected low bridge. They also limit one’s line of vision which could prove costly! However one can appreciate how tempting it is to travel undercover when taking to the helm in the wet and wind. Cruiser deck sterns are at a risk of water ingress through the deck boards as these have to be removable to allow ready access to the engine. Some sort of stern cover is therefore a necessity when leaving the boat for any length of time.
The other issue we are discovering is battery power, or lack of it. Our fridge keeps flashing at us and there was disappointment this evening when my gin had no ice! Not wishing this to become a habit I am bowing to the boaters who feel solar power is a necessity for keeping a fridge working effectively when cruising is limited, as obviously the engine has to run to enable the boat batteries to charge. Having said that, the sun has to shine to activate the solar panels so installing them is not a winter priority!
NarrowboatTLC 