Windy, but Oh what the heck!

It was so windy last night we were up at 3.30am with Del adjusting the fenders. At least that gave us another couple of hours sleep. We left Limehouse early this morning after making the decision to go despite the high winds. We will miss Limehouse and have really enjoyed our stay there. We soon realised it might be a big mistake as mooring at locks was very tricky and the cross winds were blowing us about all over the place. It was also dragging all the rubbish into our path and into locks and it wasn't long before we picked up a huge tarpaulin as we were entering a lock which rapped itself round the prop giving Derwent6 no brakes. We had no choice but to let her drift onto the cill with a bang. Luckily we weren't going too fast when it happened, and we just had to stand a few things back up on Derwent6. We were cleaning the prop a hell of a lot through the Hackney section and you could see under the surface of the water loads of plastic bags, a bit scary really that we were going along at all. We just managed to make each lock and clear the prop to make the next one. Once you get past Islington tunnel things get a bit better. We made our way through Camden and through Regent's park. All in all, we had a good journey into Paddington Basin all be it a bit shallow in places. You can make your own minds up as to why it was so shallow ;-) There were a few moorings as we came in to the basin, but it was very tricky turning at the end due to the wind blowing hard at us side on. Al had to stand on the side to keep us upright. After mooring, the security warden came round and took our number and we thanked him for keeping a eye on us, after saying that, then six lads were hanging around and one even tried to sit on the roof of Derwent6 while we were on board...(he won't be doing that anymore)

In the evening we just chilled by the fire with a dvd.