With the cabinside repaired it was time to finish the roof. It narrows towards the front so it was possible to use one of the roof panels lengthwise instead of across, which saved waste. One of the offcuts finished the job off.
With that done I changed jobs and went up to Stalybridge for a day to finish re-assembling "Forget me Not"s gearbox. Another day was spent fitting it but at the end of the day I tried rotating the engine via the shaft and gearbox. This worked in forward but didn't seem to work in reverse. Dismayed, I took the box off again, thinking I'd missed something and would have to take it all to bits again. We could do with a volunteer chief engineer as mechanics is not really my forte.
I tried turning the gears from the input end, and it worked in both directions. I decided the only thing to do would be to put the box back on, put oil in the engine, start it and see what happens. The down side of this is that, if the gearbox does need to come off again I have to drain the oil out of the engine again. The Albin is unusual in that the engine and gearbox share the same oil rather than having separate sumps..
I had been feeling tired, achey and had a sore throat for all of the day. I'd had some sort of lurgi for a few days but it seemed to have reached its zenith. After my frustrating day I went home to Em, who had also been feeling poorly, and did a convincing impression of Eeyore on my arrival. Em did not appreciate this.
My plan had been to get "Forget me Not" running and use her to carry all the clutter that had built up on the bank as well as tow "Hazel" back to Portland Basin. This wasn't going to happen now, but I was very aware of the down sides of being under the bridge. Not only did I have to organise boat sitters to keep her safe, but charging her batteries from a generator is a long, noisy, expensive and carbon hungry process. Just to complicate things, Elizabeth, her weekend boatsitter, had needed to let the fire go out because the central heating was making disturbing noises.
After a good long sleep I woke up on Monday morning full of beans. The lurgi had departed in the night. I was expecting a visit from Danny to do some finishing off work. I'd also had a message from Chris Gladwin to say that she would be visiting and would bring a friend.
I decided to start clearing the clutter anyway and enlisted Aaron to help with this. When Chris and her friend, Dave, arrived they quickly set to work with Aaron carrying stuff up the slope and shoving it into the trailer. I was amazed at how much they managed to jam in. More immediately useful stuff went into "Hazel" and in next to no time the area was cleared.
Kim arrived in a timely manner after spending the day working with Dave to replace the old pedestrian gate at Knowl St boatyard. He gave me the keys to the new lock, which I absent mindedly put somewhere. He offered to tow "Hazel" to Ashton, thus robbing Aaron of his excuse to show off his equine strength by bowhauling the trip.
Soon we were bowling along the canal with Dave having his first go at butty steering, which he did very well. Chris, Dave and I walked back along the towpath to collect vehicles. On the way I showed off the various trees that we've planted over the years.
The trailer was jam full of useful wood, firewood, tarpaulins, recyclables and rubbish. In the morning I drove this to the boatyard to unload. It will be sorted out at some future date.
When I got there I realised that I hadn't got the key to the new lock. In fact, I had no recollection of where I had put it. We've made unauthorised access to the boatyard pretty difficult, but I managed to climb in. Luckily I have a key for the vehicle gates, but these have to be unlocked from the inside.
Trailer emptied, I headed back to Ashton, where Aaron and Nessie were preparing to move "Hazel" to the Marina, for a pump out, then to Dixon & Smith (Motor Engineers) for battery charging. As the batteries charged me and Nessie worked on re-fitting lights etc that had been taken off to allow the work to be done.
