I had to get the boat to Uxbridge for Tuesday lunchtime so that Peter Thompson could refit my SR3. Of course it's never that simple, Mick the Tug was not sure if he would be available, so I had to get the boat to Bulls Bridge on Monday to have any chance of getting to Uxbridge for Tuesday. A good friend of mine from work offered to help me if I needed to pull it, so I called on his help, and we started to pull the boat the four miles. It didn't help that it was freezing (laterally), we had to pull the boat through the iced over canal.

Once the boat was moving it was not much of a problem cutting through the ice, but it was difficult to control it as it only wanted to go in straight lines. There is a complex of corners just south of the A40, and very shallow edges, so we ended up aground a good amount of time. Once we found a better way of controlling the boat - one on the front rope, the other on the stern - we started to make a reasonable speed. At about 2pm we finally reached Bulls Bridge, and to our surprise found the main line free of ice! Since we were going to do the rest tomorrow, my friend got on a bus to get back to Northolt.

Tuesday 28th Dec 2004

I could not get hold of Mick again, so my friend and I started the long slog upto Uxbridge. It was windy which didn't help in getting to boat across to the other side of the canal at Bulls Bridge, and a small tree just east of the junction got in the way, and my poor old friend ended drifting across to the other side of the canal with me stuck on the bank.

We eventually got a rhythm going - this time without the ice it was much easier to use the centre and bow ropes. After about a mile, a boat from the residential moorings at Bulls Bridge came along and offered to tow us the rest of the way, and my mate then made a run for it back to his car at Bulls Bridge.

The rest of the trip went smoothly, except at the narrows we singled out. Unfortunately the skipper of the other boat forgot to pick up my bow rope as he passed, and a bit of bank colliding, and general manoeuvring ensued!

Peter started installing the engine, but it was going to be a long job, and eventually got it working all properly by Thursday evening.

Thursday 30th Dec 2004

I had already got the car to Uxbridge, but since Peter wanted a lift down to his boat, he kindly offered to do the car jiggle to get my car back to Northolt in return. We trundled down the canal to his boat, and I then continued down to Cowley lock. There was a working pair of boats just above the lock selling diesel at a very reasonable rate of 38p a litre, so I filled up (170l), and by the time the lock was ready I could hear the distinctive sound of Peter's Bollinder chugging down the cut. We worked the lock together, where he turned to go back up the canal to Denham for some new year celebrations with some friends.

I decided to spend the night below the lock, and get off early the next morning.

Friday 31th Dec 2004

Early ended up being at 8am, but once away from the moored boats I found the fan belt was slipping. A quick tighten, and a blast down the big deep wide bit just south of Cowley Peachy junction showed the boat reaching 5mph, which was much quicker then I ever managed before. I got to Northolt at about midday after a quick shop in Tescos at Bulls Bridge. I then drove the 250 miles to Hull for the New Years party that my Aunt, and Uncle always puts on.

Monday 3rd Jan 2005

I wanted to spend the night in Paddington basin for a change, and to be close enough to St Pancras to be able to join another boat down the locks. Since I had lots of sorting out to do, me and my Dad didn't get off till late. It did give us chance to watch Peter Davidson being filmed for a TV series called The Last Detective on the bank opposite my mooring.

We ended up doing the last couple of miles in the dark. It was a nice entry into the basin at night, and we found a mooring near the end of the normally navigable bit on a floating pontoon. There were no mooring rings on this jetty, so the front rope had to wrap around the structure!

We then spent one of the windiest nights I'd ever had on the boat. Thanks to the poor mooring arrangements we were banging about quite a bit.

Continued below...

Tuesday 4th Jan 2005

I didn't get up until 10am, and while I told Dad we had no rush to get off, already the morning was going, and from the night previous I had found the batteries were in poor condition, and not lasting at all well. A look at the electrolyte levels showed a lack of water in the batteries. We had a trek up the Edgware Road to find somewhere to buy Deionised water from, and by the time we had dropped nearly a gallon and a half into the batteries it was past midday.

We had a good run down the canal to Bow locks, arriving at about 5pm. The other boats were waiting, and the organiser came to meet us. We bought some essentials for cooking deep fat fried chips as I normally buy oven chips, but thought they might not last well in a fridge running off rubbish batteries.

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Wednesday 5th Jan 2005

We knew there were about 8 boats, so we thought it would be some time before they got through the lock, and so set our alarms for 6am, instead of being ready for off at 6. By 6:10 the organiser called my mobile, worried about our location. We set off, but we ended up waiting over 10 minutes for the last locking anyway.

We were on the tideway by about 6:30am, and since we were playing catch up it was a quick dash down the first part of the bow creak. It was a good test of the engine, and we made very good speed keeping up with the organiser's boat "Brasso", which sounded like a good old fashioned plodder as well (probably water cooled).

The sky was just starting to get light as we entered the Thames, and it didn't take to long to get down to the tidal barrier. Another couple of miles, and a glorious sunrise later we were at the Royal Dock's King George V entrance lock. It didn't take long to work through the lock, but once up we were asked to wait. I'm still not sure why, the police were mentioned, as well as the airport. I can only guess that they wanted to hold us up while the next lock full came through, and then to let us go all at once to minimise disruption to the morning rush of landing planes.

The docks complex is big, I mean it's really big. It's main drag is about two miles long, and very wide. Then there are some other docks off the side as well - 250 acres of water in all, but I'm not sure of the depth of water in them! The docks run along side the London City airport, and several planes took off, and landed while we travelled along the dock.

We finally reached the western end of the dock, and moored at a lower section of wall near the Royal Victoria DLR station.

The wind was whipping up the water, but with some improvised fenders to keep the boat away from some chain holding brackets that stuck out of the wall everything was fine.

Later in the week (Friday night to be precise), the wind increased even more. Me and my Dad went around the boat show on Friday, and I ended up buying some little round fenders. That night it blow a gale with gusts upto 70mph, and we were really glad of the new fenders. The waves were knocking the tiller about, which was making large amounts of scraping noises, and so after trying many different rope configurations, I got the three-in-one oil out, and gave it a good squirt. It was squeaking again before morning!

The wind was so strong the spray was being lifted right over the boat, it was like being inside a washing machine. Some of the gusts were like a jet engine going overhead - it wasn't planes from the airport, as it's closed at that time of night! A few seconds after each gust, the waves then got bigger, and noisier!

I also purchased a Shoreline 12v fridge, and 3x110 amp hour Absorbed Glass Matt (AGM) batteries, which are suppose to be as good as gel batteries, but a lot cheaper. This should keep my food cold for a while before having to run the engine.

Continued...