Sunday, February 15, 2009

Ice breaker and our first blogger on board

Woke up today with a slight thaw overnight but the ice was still over half a inch thick, so we decided to stay put again. This will be the 17th day we have stayed put, with our waste tank now nearly full and water and diesel tanks nearly empty, and we are now on our last bag of coal. We were out gathering extra sticks for kindling when we heard a crashing noise in the distance. It was a British Waterways boat smashing it's way through the ice, going backwards and forwards to get momentum. It was such a welcome sight as the last boat to past us was n.b Pickles2 17 days ago. You can see the channel it had cut through the ice but we still could not get out to that channel, but it was melting fast.
Then we could feel movement through the locks and low and behold three boats came past us in the other direction breaking up the ice completely, the third boat being n.b Shadow and fellow blogger halfie. When he saw us he quickly pulled up behind us and banged on the side with a lovely cake in his hand. The kettle was already on so we sat down for a good natter. He came round with his brother Dave and Dave's two children who were having a whale of a time. It was great to meet you all and thanks for the cake!

At last we should be on the move tomorrow as we need to get to a water point to take on water and get some washing done (Del's running out of pants) Let hope it doesn''t freeze tonight.

1 comment:

Halfie said...

Del and Al, it was great to meet you. What a fantastic boat! I'll be writing up our trip now I've got back home. Will I ever catch up on blog-reading though?