Freedom

We arrived at Pickles No 2 to find that our fears were without foundation and that it had not toppled over and sunk, caught fire or blown up. In fact it looked like every other boat in the marina. Since it was midnight, we decided to stick to our better judgement and not to start the engine and rather have a glass of wine and settle down for the night.

In the morning I found that the starter battery would not turn over the engine and in fact it had only 4.2 volts in the battery. Oh dear! Not good for the longevity of the battery. However it started with the aid of a spare battery and some jump leads. Since then it has fully charged and kept it's charge well. We'll see haw long it lasts. I've no idea what could have discharged the battery to that extent as the only thing to come off it is the bilge pump and the bilges had no evidence of water in them and the pump still works so was not running dry. One of those many electrical mysteries.

'Lets get out of this place', the boat was screaming at us and we were echoing these sentiments. It was like running the gauntlet unloading the car and getting everything back into the boat with all those eyes on us (or possibly our paranoia). We paid our dues and after filling up hit the open canal. We are slowly making our way to the Shakerstone Family Festival site and should be there for the weekend.

I've only seen the one historic boat so far heading towards the Festival site and that was Roger Fuller (no, that's not the name of the boat. That's a boat builder) with nb Azalea towing and the ex working butty, Ilford. There will be many others over the next two weeks. I note that Roger Passed nb Hadar at Great Haywood on Saturday. We popped down to the festival site to see if there is going to be much room for the boat and spoke to Cyril, one of the organisers. Ohh! The ex GUCC nb Antlia has just passed.