Winter is here

Sorry for the lack of updates recently.

Winter has come. The chilly nights have drawn in, and it's fully dark by 5pm now. Sheena's sprained her ankle, and Sumo's been limping because he'd overdone it. For one reason or another, we haven't been out and about as much as we'd have liked.


The lock closure program is now in effect, and we won't be leaving the marina and heading upstream to Oxford until March, at least. But the good news is, most days, there's hardly any current on the river at all. It's nowhere near as severe as this time last year. Went for a jolly up to Marlow on saturday. It took us an hour and a half to get there, as the wind was blowing us about. But only thirty minutes to get ourselves back. We'd never been so fast on a narrowboat, and could easily have towed a waterskier.

Today we had a bit of a drama with the starter battery. We'd been relying on the alternator to charge it up, because the mastervolt didn't. The engine wouldn't start, and several attempts caused the battery to run flat. Steve discovered a fuse had popped, so he replaced it. Then he managed to jump start us by hooking up the domestic batteries to the starter battery. Thanks Steve. Everything is working fine now.

Delighted to be fully operational again, we took the boat out for some cold weather practice. We've done a night cruise back from Cookham before, but we didn't fancy mooring up in the dark tonight, and headed back after watching the sunset. Sheena brought us back alongside.