Pointing North again

Sunday 26th October

Using the extra hour, we arrived at Jannock bright and early and set off for a two hour cruise to turn her round. This was needed to achieve three objectives.

A. Warm up the engine for a service.

B. Get the pumpout fittings bankside.

C. Get the cruiser stern away from the overhanging tree because the berries it drops keep blocking the self drain holes.

We moved across and dropped down through lock 59 once I had extracted the bike from within Jannock. Just before we left the lock a couple appeared and were interested in watching what we were doing. I explained that it was all over here but if they walk down to lock 60 they could see it all again. I cycled off and they joined us just as Jannock entered the lock and so Brenda invited them aboard to experience the transit from on the boat. Once through 60 I cycled down and opened Winkwell bridge with our passengers still happily enjoying the ride.

Through lock 61 and I left the offside bottom gate open and hopped smartly onto the foredeck when Brenda took Jannock out. We always try to use the offside gate here as when you are re-entering on the return journey it allows you to take the river flow into account and not clout the gate hard. At the winding hole I was able to indicate how close she was to the bank as she winded and she did a perfect manoeuvre which really impressed our passengers. Once turned it was back into lock 61 to retrace our route back up to the mooring.

Our passengers got off once we has ascended 61 as their car was parked in the pub carpark. We continued back through the swingbridge and up the last two locks back to our mooring. Once there I immediately did and oil and filter change on the engine and also extracted and replaced the gearbox oil. Brenda spent the couple of hours tidying up our patch of garden which had been neglected since April.

After lunch I joined her doing gardenny things like cutting off the remains of the branch that the wind broke down last weekend. Our little trip ahs increased our yearly totals to 688 miles and 485 locks for the year.

Graham