No, Brandy Pad hasn’t grown wheels!

• Living aboard

So, we are finally back on board. On board, but not yet back on the water. Bluewater Boats have done a great job with some repainting for us:

A new coat, but still landlocked

Unfortunately the crane and low-loader required to return Brandy Pad to the canals is not available until Wednesday. We finally moved back on board yesterday (Friday) and are currently living in the yard. Great to be home again, but it feels very strange that the boat doesn’t move. On top of that, because of the way the boat would sit in the water, on dry land the bow is currently lower than the stern and the floor slopes to the front slightly – normally there is a slight slope to the rear. Not a major problem, except that things like the galley draining board currently slopes the wrong way to drain! Looking forward to Wednesday.

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Mods and Locks

• Challenges
• Fittings
• Interior
• Living aboard
• Moving
• On the move

While we were in the USA visiting Nick and his family, we left Brandy Pad in a marina at Stretford (Manchester).  When the boat was built, we had decided to keep the saloon “open plan”. Hire boats we have had in the past worked well with a table, 4 chairs and a couple of armchairs and we wanted to see if something similar would work for us. Having tried a couple of different combinations we eventually came to realise that the hire boats had been quite a bit longer and hence had more room in the saloon than we have. So, we decided to have a dinette built in. This should give us a more appropriate sitting/dining area and also double up as a spare bed for visitors. Stretford Marine were due to do the work while we were away, but Mal, the carpenter, was delayed on another project and wasn’t able to start until we came back.  Just as well really as we had to make quite a lot of decisions on the design as it was being built.  This was the saloon before:

Empty space (the folding table we had been using is on the bottom left)

The dinette is now completed successfully and we are very happy with the end result as it is proving more practical (and comfortable) than the previous arrangement:

Yesterday (Thursday) we tackled the Wigan flight of locks.  This is a rise of just under 215 feet over 21 challenging locks. Due to water shortages in the pounds between the locks, boats are only allowed into or out of the flight between 8-9am and 2-3pm.  So, we were up early and ready to get going at 8am.  We were first in the queue, having moved up to wait there the night before, and “buddied” up with Jeremy and Mary on nb Angelica. This meant we went up through all the locks together as the locks are wide enough for two narrowboats at once.  This saves water and shares the work.  In fact, we roped together at the bottom and stayed that way to the top.  We have not used this particular technique before, but it means that one boat does most of the driving and steering calling for assistance from the second boat when necessary. The water level was so low in one of the pounds between locks that Brandy Pad ran aground, so I had to call for Helen to run some more water through the next lock into our pound to float us off.

We completed the whole climb in around 5 hours and slept very well last night 😉

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Mud

• Living aboard
• On the move

One of the best things about being out on the canals at this time of year is that there are few others out and about, so we pretty much have them to ourselves.  Against that, one of the worst is the mud (click on the thumbnails for a larger view):

This is by no means the worst (it was a water point where we were filling up), but it is typical of the state of the towpath at this time of year – at least when they are not actually frozen.

Hint – save your cardboard boxes to use as an improvised mat, so that your lovely, new light coloured deck doesn’t get any dirtier:

On the other hand, you get beautiful views like this one from our bedroom window (the bow) just before we set off this morning (note the muddy towpath again):

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