Since getting Blackstone back from Swanley Carl has been trying to paint the "new" bit. Every time he went to the marina to work on it rain stopped play! In the end he was so fed up with not getting anywhere we decided to book the dry dock at Worsley and have the whole boat re painted.
Carl cruised up to Altrincham to meet Liz on Friday afternoon. We have been having trouble with diesel bug this year and the fuel pump filter regularly needs changing. Carl changed the filter on Friday afternoon. Unfortunately, when he put the fuel pump back on the engine a wire sparked and fell off. We were without a fuel pump. It was five o'clock, so we had no way of getting a new one until Monday. We resigned ourselves to missing the dry dock.
Everything related to the stretch seemed to be jinxed. (We broke down on the way to Swanley resulting in a large bill for labour from RCR even though we are members; the washer on the shower tap went, resulting in lots of water in the bilges and the shower being dismantled; there was a problem with the windows fitted at Swanley so we had to order and fit new ones when we got back; the engineer at Swanley dropped our boat keys in the canal and despite fishing with the magnet we could not find them; we broke down twice on the way back from Swanley; we missed our slot with the boat fitter because we were stuck at Swanley for so long; we got the diesel bug; and now we had broken down again!!!)
While Liz was sorting out her dad on Saturday morning, a couple passed on their boat, Ariel, on their way to Castlefields. When Carl told them our problems, they offered to detour to Worsley and give us a tow. They set off before Liz got back, so she had to run along the tow path to catch up with them! We could not believe our luck. It is wonderful how helpful boaters are to each other.
Liam on Ariel towing Blackstone
We got to Worsley for lunch time Saturday and went into the dry dock about 10.00am on Sunday. We are all ready for the painting to start on Monday. Lets hope nothing else goes wrong.
Safely in the dry dock.
