Hoping for a better 2018

Well it didn't happen last year. The boat yard had kept fobbing us off regards the sterndrive and it got to a point it was too late to bother. I told them I'd sort myself. I managed to source some stern drive bellows from Germany which appear to be the last supplier of these parts globally. I left the parts with a local Marine Engineer for the winter who appear to have done a lovely job on the drive including new exhaust and drive bellows, new pipe for the raw water feed, new anodes, transmission oil etc.

The boat safety is now also due so time has been taken to fit a new gas locker as the old one was looking a little decrepit.  

The weather has been pretty rubbish this week but the weather held off enough Monday and Tuesday to apply 2 coats of antifoul paint to the hull. So the boat safety is booked in for Saturday and fingers crossed the boat will be back in the water very soon.

A late start to the season

It been a slow start to the year due to among other things illness.

I was admitted to hospital back in November with pneumonia and it took quite a while to feel myself again. I began preparing the boat generally in April before ending back in hospital due to atrial fibrillation shortly after. Medication has settled things. I need the stern drive bellows replacing but the boat yard are dragging their feet despite saying they should be able to do the job for me! Hopefully she'll be up and running soon.

Journey to Thorne for lift

Unfortunately there has been evidence of a leak from the sterndrive, on this type of drive it is not catastrophic but will damage the drive if not sorted so we are heading to Thorne as we want it on dry land before we go to Spain for 3 weeks. Heading down to Bramwith Junction we met the only large commercial vessel working on th Aire and Calder - wow.

We stayed at Thorne visitor moorings as we arrived a day earlier than planned as we were going to stop for the night at Barnby Dun but found very little open so just had an explore on foot.

 Clearly need of a bit of TLC

York for the Weekend

Fiona's sister and family brought their caravan up to Yorkshire and stayed at Naburn Lock Caravan Park so we could meet up for the weekend. Here is Bombardier moored at Naburn Lock.

On the Saturday we all had a run into York for a wander around the city. The only difficulty we had was in getting Molly the Labrador on board as she wasn't very keen!

We departed Naburn Lock on the Sunday morning and headed back to Selby.

The journey was a tricky one being close to a spring tide. As we approached Acaster Selby the tide was coming in fast against us bringing much debris with it. We pulled in towards the bank and just held water at the main flow of debris went past before pulling out and heading back.

Our return to Naburn

The tide was a fairly late one on this occasion. 

We left Selby Lock around 5pm and headed up to Naburn ready for a trip up to York later in the week. 

For something different we decided to video the journey as we hadn't found any other videos of this trip on YouTube.

Part one is from Selby to Cawood 

Part two is Cawood to Naburn

Only one day free this weekend

Well we have only one day free this weekend so have decided to stay on the boat Friday and Saturday night and just have a run up to Wakefield and head in town for a few beers. Here we are moored at Barnsley Road after being thrown around at Fall Ings Lock which is quite ferocious!

Back to work

We left the boat at Woodlesford due to the adverse weather and came back on Thursday and decided to have a run up to Stanley Ferry. Here I am waiting for the lock to empty at Woodnook Lock at Whitwood.

Unfortunately we had a mishap at Birkwood Lock. There was a severe cross-wind which took hold of the boat slamming it sideways into the canal side and from this point the engine began running very roughly so we had to limp on to Stanley Ferry and investigate there.

Once moored up I investigasted what may have gone wrong. Nothing was obvious but I worked my way through the ignition system being my hunch of the problem. It appeared on refitting the distributor I had not tightened the pinch bolt enough. This allowed the distributor to move when we hit the side of the canal putting the timing out. I retimed and it is now running fine.