Narrowboat Balmaha - Boston to Cromwell Lock

Monday 7th to Sunday 13th September 2009.

Before we talk about Monday look at this naughty boy or should I say challenging boy if I’m pc. Sunday evening he climbed the un-climbable fence, stripped down to his underwear, wet himself, then ran along the pontoon when he saw me brandishing the camera and dived into the river.

This clever lad, egged on by the girls who watched him from the road, then completely stripped, dressed again and climbed the fence back to the road. Blinking marvellous when you consider how much has been spent on stopping him doing what he just did.

Back to Monday and it’s time for us to settle up with the guy in the office. I took the meter readings to him and he looked puzzled. Shouldn’t be that much he said, looks wrong to me, you can’t have used several pounds worth of electricity without an enormous, greedy immersion heater. Have you noted the decimal point, he asked. No, well then that’s where we’ve gone wrong. Those meters have a decimal point that you can’t read in the sunlight. Instead of pounds we spent pennies over those three days so we were well pleased.

I got it in the ear when I asked how many narrowboats crossed the Wash. He’s not a fan by any means and had plenty to say on the matter including predicting the day when insurance companies won’t cover the sea transit between Kings Lynn and Boston, not for love nor money.

Monday isn’t a busy day, plastic owners have gone back home and it’s just us motoring up the Witham in the direction of Lincoln. There’s not a lot to see, yet I still find it beautiful, a bit like the southern Fens. Cows pop their heads over the river bank to see who’s daft enough to cruise these waters.

A solitary postman kept us company where the road followed the river, delivering to remote farms and dodging tractors carrying hay cutting and turning machinery.

The journey to Washingborough took six hours so this was a longish day for us and though the sun broke through occasionally the wind still got us despite the high river banks and tree cover.

I am starting to appreciate the odd bit of river art in the form of flames, cornstalks and metal cows. It breaks the monotony.
While not wishing to appeal only to the farmers here’s a real cow alongside its iron copy.

The RAF is very much in evidence at Washingbro’. While I studied a pizza delivery plane high above the clouds another pizza or pancake plane roared overhead. Most fittingly V found Nicholson’s description for this section of river “Overhead AWACS fly lazily away on missions, having taken off from nearby Waddington airfield”. I counted five of these beasties clipping our hedges so someone isn’t flying off on a mission.

Tuesday
Washingbro’s moorings are within sight of Lincoln and within the hour we were tied up right outside the shops.

A hop, skip and a jump later we were up the hill and in the cathedral. Actually we couldn’t do the grand tour as Uni graduation was under way.

While a voice droned on in the nave us commoners crept about the numerous side rooms admiring the silver, the wood carvings and paintings. As for me I was looking high and low for stone mason’s marks and peering through gaps in doors that obviously led to secret passages.

Rapturous applause signalled time to leave, it wouldn’t be long before cloaked and hatted graduates flooded the cobbled yards in front of the exits. The castle beckoned next and we did the walk up to the stone thingy on the pimple.

The Victorian prison would have been interesting but our timing was wrong, the grounds had been turned over to the university bun fight and the castle grounds were fast filling up.

We stopped on the way down the hill to take late elevenses in one of those front room tea shops. While half the customers chatting excitedly about life in halls of residence the other half, whilst pretending to be otherwise occupied, listened intently to what the student population got up to in term time.
Outside, a pavement artist roped off a square and worked his magic with silver sand. I imagine he’s waited weeks for weather without wind or rain.

To do it justice we should have given Lincoln a couple of days of our time but our current schedule says no. I’m growing strangely attracted to Lincolnshire and the chances are we’ll be back for a proper tour of the city.

Saxilby just managed to squeeze us in under the trees by the road bridge. I wasn’t bothered about the trees until I saw what the birds had been eating. Bushes laden with juicy black berries were miraculously stripped of their fruit and the digested remains were transported to the boat paintwork. Someone once said that Britain had invented the strongest glue in the world but I suspect they didn’t mean superglue or two part epoxy. First choice has to be dried Ready Brek on a breakfast cereal bowl but a close runner up must be Saxilby bird poo. Even after a thorough soaking I still had to use a chisel.

Wednesday and Thursday were lazy days at Saxilby. By biding our time we managed to get prime position on the moorings next to the footbridge and in wall to wall sunshine. V pointed out that by walking I would discover that there was more to the town than Mr Tong’s hardware store. There were hairdressers, one is never enough in a village, and a shop that does most things that you can eat or read. There was even a post office, and of course the Co-op if you’re prepared to walk a little further.

More sun meant more barbeques, yes in September in Lincolnshire. We had to be done by 6 o’clock when the moon came out but it was a welcome warm spell after a couple of weeks of wind and dull skies.

It’s almost four years since we stepped onto a brand new boat and time hasn’t been kind to the stern deck boards. Cuts and scratches in the textured plastic coating, ragged board edges and severe colour fading were starting to bother me but it was the crumbling plywood edges that concerned me most.

During the last 12 months I’ve tried applying various things like car polish, baby oil and engine oil. Engine oil was the funniest because the next day, after rain, we couldn’t walk on it for fear of skidding and falling over the side. We had to endure newspapers on the deck until the slipperiness had gone. Mind you the finish was beautiful and the deck looked like new but it didn’t last more than a couple of weeks.

This time I thought I’d try teak oil. It has saved my bacon many times on the side door wooden inserts where the varnish cracks and water gets into the wood. As soon as I see the wood go a shade darker I scratch the varnish and apply teak oil. It doesn’t exactly match the satin finish of the varnish but it saves having to keep the doors closed when it rains.

So more out of desperation than woodmanship I wiped the stern deck with teak oil and waited for the morning. Results looked good, the original dark brown colour returned and water ran straight off instead of soaking into the scratches. But best of all the plywood edges are sealed against water ingress and the aging process has slowed. There are other things that need the aging process slowing down but for now we’ll concentrate on the boat and leave V out of it.

On Friday we pottered on up to Torksey and settled down furthest from the others so we could run the engine and play aerials.
Anyone who knows Saxilby will know about the apple trees between the road and the water’s edge. Everything within arms reach had gone by the time we arrived but on the way to Torksey there’s a single tree full of big red-uns so out came the fishing net and in came a pound of eaters. These were eaters with a sharp edge so V picked the last of the blackberries and made blackberry and apple in pancakes, yummy.

The warm evening sun brought out the weekend boats, mostly plastic, and although I had plenty of sanding and varnishing to do the unexpected fine weather had put me in holiday mood.

It had been so warm that caps and jackets had been dispensed with and the captain had ordered shorts and tee shirts once we’d finished with engines.
Cook was pleased when the galley was closed and orders came through for crew to assemble shore-side for a barbeque.

Saturday was very much like Friday with smashing weather and plenty to see as boats came and went. One skipper pointed at a pike on the other side of the canal, describing it as six feet long, at least. It’ll just have to stay there because I’m not fishing this year, haven’t even renewed my licence, besides he’s over sixty feet away.

Graham (G8LUV) called to say he was going to the Loughborough Ham Fest with his cousin Malcolm (G3NUB ) and the event’s description had me drooling and desperately needing to go. But, as much as I’d like to be there I can’t but I’ll certainly try to add it to next year’s cruising plans.

Sunday was quite a day. The tides are neaps not springs so there’s little rise and fall and we’d decided to go down through Torksey lock to sit on the pontoon moorings until Monday afternoon’s tide. We wandered down to the lock to get instructions while filling the water tank and emptying the ‘other’ tank but no one came on duty until midday. When we eventually found the lockkeeper he didn’t look hopeful on a pre-tide lock transit because the electronics box says only 720mm of water over the cill. I must have looked desperate so he said get in the lock fast and he’d have a go at shifting us even if it meant flushing us through from behind. This I wanted to see.

Down we went and with inches to spare on the gauge we watched the gates open and the water rush out. Engaging forward gear nothing happened, we were six inches out of the water, the stern was stuck to the bottom and no amount of flushing was going to shift us onto a falling tide.

You can’t always trust those water gauges.

Three hours later as the clouds replaced the sun we were joined by three other boats and we made a more dignified exit on a rising tide.

Someone must be having an air show down Boston way because the Red Arrows and a Vulcan flew overhead from over that way.

We appeared to be cruising quite fast until we were overtaken by water skiers. It was quite exciting having waves go down the side, hit the fenders and splash the decks. There was a moment, as we rolled over their bow wave, that I thought we were going to lose all our crockery but there was no harm done, no beer spilt as they say.

What took us two and a half hours going downstream took us three going up and we made it to Cromwell lock a couple of minutes after the first plastic of the day. Not bad going on a neap tide I’d say, mind you I had to put a bungee strap on the throttle to hold it at 2000 rpm all the way up.

It was getting dark when we arrived and we were glad to find a bit of wall to tie up to. Tomorrow, as boats move off to Newark, we’ll grab a pontoon mooring and test our new cards in one of those electricity posts. Luxury.