A Winter's Trip

We planned to take "Forget me Not" up the 7 locks to Stalybridge yesterday, but Storm Arwen put paid to that idea. This morning dawned clear and still and sunny. I met Aaron and Danny at Portland basin and we set off at about 10.15. The sky had already clouded over.

Someone had unhelpfully tied their boat abreast of the CRT boat, leaving only just enough deep water to get past.

After the Asda tunnel comes the Sea Cadet moorings, shortly before lock 1 of the Huddersfield (very) Narrow Canal.

Things went smoothly though the weather was getting grimmer and grimmer. The hills in the distance were already covered in snow.

Unusually the long pound between locks 3 and 4 was brimful and running over the weir. At Clarence St moorings I noticed that the battered fibreglass cruiser that had been sunk there for a year had gone. We found it on the towpath side further along, still looking disreputable but now afloat.

I had a brief conversation with its new owner as I walked ahead to set lock 4. He said he was coming down tomorrow to tidy up, and seemed to be under no illusions about the task that he had taken on.
As "Forget me Not" entered number 4 the snow began, light at first but getting steadily stronger. As we worked through 5 the sky darkened further and the surroundings started to take on a Christmas card look.



The previous day's storm had filled the canal with leaves and the boat struggled to make progress as its propeller tried to grip in the cold leafy stew. The engine strained at the extra work and threw out thick black smoke.


The final lock, number 7, is by the main Mottram Road. Above it the boat winded, then reversed the last 100 yards or so to the boatyard. Danny steered with the shaft.



5th January 2010 A Cold Christmas for Captain Kit Crewbucket

2010-01-05 @ 13:52:18 by ashtonboatman


A Cold Christmas for Captain Kit Crewbucket.

Captain Kit Crewbucket is a lucky black tomcat. In February 2003 he appeared under a tarpaulin in the hold of "Forget me Not". He was lost, terrified and wouldn't come near anyone. We estimated his age as about 6 months. Gradually as we put food out he learned to trust us. When I brought his food at dusk I would look under the tarpaulin and just see his two eyes shining in the dark. I thought it looked a bit ghostly, so I named him Kit Crewbucket after a spirit that is said to haunt Harecastle canal tunnel. One of the museum staff took a particular interest in our new arrival, but he called the cat Captain. As all readers of T.S. Eliot will know, a cat has three names, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXkLgtusza4 so he became Captain Kit Crewbucket.

Soon Captain Kit realised that he was on to a good thing on the boats with plenty of admirers to give him titbits and make fuss of him. He has become something of a celebrity at Portland Basin, with a regular column in the WCBS newsletter and occasional appearances in the local paper. Fans would visit from foreign places (like Yorkshire) in the hope of a glimpse of our celebrity pussycat.

It must be said that Captain Kit has always enjoyed the summer more than the winter. Basking in the sun has always been more his style than sheltering from the dreich drizzle and, his particular bette noir, snow.

When it began to snow, just before the Solstice, the Captain began to show a marked reluctance to come outside. When he did he would carefully hop between my footprints to avoid his paws sinking into the white stuff. After New Year the temperature dropped more and everywhere became covered in an 8 inch freezing white duvet. Kit had made himself a nest aboard "Hazel" and refused to leave it even for his favourite cat treats. It seemed like the time had come for the Captain to be given a holiday from the boats.

My partner, Emuna, loves cats. She used to have a wonderful black and white cat called Oedipuss who lived to be a grand old lady of 20. After Oedi died, Emuna decided not to have another cat. For several years, As Oedipuss got older, she had been reluctant to go away because she would not trust anyone else with the precious puss. She felt that having a cat was too much of a tie.

Emuna enthusiastically offered to look after Captain Kit for a while at her little house in Ashton, so we drove through the deep snow to park the van as near the basin as we dared, then trudged down to collect him. Cats generally don't like leaving their territories, and Kit was no exception. He struggled and yowled as I carried him through the deep snow to the van (which by then looked like a mobile ice cream).

Soon we were at Emuna's house and, after spending about an hour hiding under the bed, Captain Kit realised that lying on top of the bed was much more comfortable, and he's hardly moved from there since. He seems to be taking quite nicely to being a house cat. Now my concern is whether I'll be able to prise Emuna and Captain Kit apart when the time comes for him to resume command of the boats.




A Wintry Week 20th December 2009

2009-12-20 @ 22:08:36 by ashtonboatman

A wintry week

Oh the joys of looking after old boats in the winter. For a while I've been putting off searching "Elton" to find where she was leaking. Steadily the leak got worse until last Sunday she virtually sank and I had to start the 2" pump to bring here up again. I kept changing batteries for the bilge pumps, which were running constantly, sometimes getting up at 3 AM, until on Wednesday I decided I would have to drop everything else I was supposed to be doing to trawl through piles of useful items in her hold and try to find it. My delay in dealing with this was partly because I was feeling rotten with a virus that just won't go away. Paddling about in freezing water is not a recommended cure for the flu!

I was all day shifting stuff around and lifting shutts ( floor sections) until it was getting dark. I was on the verge of giving up when I spotted a commotion in the bilge under the back cabin. I lifted the shutt to reveal a little fountain where a knot in the elm bottom had dropped out. A quick squirt of expanding foam plugged the leak and I headed thankfully home. An evening inspection showed that she was still taking a lot of water. My theory about this was that moving stuff around had altered her trim and put a leaky seam under water. Early on Thursday, before starting my day's gardening work, I re-trimmed the boat, changed the bilge pump battery and hoped for the best.

A quick check after work showed that she was OK, but on the way to Latihan it started to snow. Frost and snow themselves cause problems with frozen up bilge pumps and snow weighing down float switches so that they don't work. The last couple of days have seen me running round with blowlamps and kettles of hot water to keep the pumps working while the scene has become steadily more christmas cardy.

Tomorrow is the Solstice and I plan a celebration with a bonfire to remind the Sun to come back. The winter weather is causing a few logistical problems in setting this up though.