Erring On The Side Of Caution

(Boat Flamingo - posted by Alan)

(Post for Tuesday 20th August)


The start of yet another trip where things have not gone to plan, but probably the only recent one where it happened on day 1!

The plan was to take both boats to the historic boat gatehering at Alvecote Marina this coming weekend.  This is our favourite organised historic boating event of the year, and with Sickle in its shiny new paint we hoped it would balance out the fact that Flamingo is getting increaingly tired externally, and consequently increasingly hard hard to spruce up to any extent.

As far as Sickle got, before we decided to play it safe.

But it wasn't to be, unfortunately.  I had done an oil change on Sickle a day or two previously, and run up the engine on the mooring, including selecting gears, and all had seemed fine.  However after she had taken Sickle as far as the bottom of Buckby locks, Cath said she was unhappy with the difficulty she was encountering getting the gearbox in and out of gear.  David and I investigated, and agreed all did not seem as it should be.  We used our "phone a friend" lifeline for some additional advice, and concluded if there was genuinely a problem we were unlikely to fix it quickly.

Much to our dissapointment we concluded the safest thing to do was to take Sickle back to her mooring, and to only take Flamingo to Alvecote.  So David and I retraced our steps with Sickle, and spent some time putting everything securely away, and locking her up.

We thought we would have to arrange a taxi back to Whilton, but someone from a neighbouring boat heard us discussing it, and offered to run us up there in his Land Rover.  I must say we were most grateful, as it was now looking increasingly unlikely we would get Flamingo to Braunston that day as planned. 

Approaching the top lock at Braunston

In practice we made good progress, and decided to press on at least through Braunston tunnel to the top of the locks.  On arrival there we reckoned we could get somewhere towards the bottom of the flight, and hopefully find a mooring in a pound near the bottom, without having to go all te way down, as there was no guarantee we would find anything on the main Braunston visitor moorings.

In fact there were no spaces in the flight, so we carried on in rapidly diminishing daylight.  Fortunately the disabled mooring spot was unoccupied.  It is legitimate to use these if no disabled boater wants it, and this late in the day it was exceedingly unlikely any would now turn up.

We hadn't planned a pub meal that evening, but by now we felt we needed one.  We are increasingly drawn to the Old Plough as being the best pub for food in Braunston, and it didn't dissapoint.  We were particularly impressed with the efficiency and friendliness of the young lady at the bar who was doing an excellent job as the only server both for drinks and food.  Generally it doesn't seem the norm to tip in pubs, but tonight I felt she had earned it.

Home Mooring to Braunston
Miles 10.4, Locks:13
Total Miles 10.4, Total Locks:13
(Sickle miles not included)