Time To Get Flamingo Moving Again.

(Boat Flamingo - posted by Alan)
Retrospective post for Thursday 1st June

Northchurch lock

Following the break down of "Sickle", and being forced to continue with just "Flamingo", we had taken the decision to leave "Flamingo" in Berkhamsted as long as we were able.  Here we could both keep an eye on it, but also hoped to carry on working on it.  In practice other pressures meant very little happened on that second front - in fact leaving it there actually generated yet more work.  It was left under overhanging trees, and as a result got covered in massive amounts of bird "poop".  This actually stuck like glue and proved initially very hard to remove to the extent that several days later some has still resisted all attempts to "unstick" it, and is still present!

Leaving lower Dudswell lock

Unfortunately there has been no further progress on resolving "Sickle's" gearbox issues, so with any hope of reuniting both boats in the near future now evaporated, we could wait no longer before starting to move "Flamingo" on again, this time back to its home mooring.  Our schedule required we complete that before next Monday, and today was the last day we could start to guarantee that.

Upper Dudswell lock

In practice we started late enough that we could only do the remaining "uphill" locks to Tring summit, and the summit pound itself.  Starting the descent through the Marsworth flight would have to wait until tomorrow.  This should be OK - we had some slack, if nothing went badly wrong, though not huge amounts of slack.

Berkhamsted to Bulbourne (Tring summit)
Miles: 5.3, Locks: 7
Total Trip Miles: 150.0, Locks: 106