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My Dad, the boats handyman, joiner, painter, problem fixer and general dogs body, loves my boat. I think it was very nice of me to buy a project for him so he isn’t bored during retirement. I also think it’s nice of me to want him to be able to handle her, in the event that I need her moving somewhere and am unable to do so myself. This is good solid common sense as I now have a little pool of people who can move her around. The only issue was that I needed to teach Dad in the first place. So, in a truly altruistic gesture, I invited Dad and Jean out for a pootle along the canal and a picnic. Jean kindly supplied the picnic, mainly because she is very good at these sorts of things and I’m just rubbish. Although I do have a reasonable stock of alcohol and soup on the boat so I do have some, if rather specific, forward planning skills.

On the allotted morning, Jean and Dad arrive at the marina laden down with roughly 4 days worth of food and beer. Marvellous! Off we go, carefully moving out of our bay so as not to scrape the very expensive boat next to us. The marina has its own weather system and my boat is simply a large sail (as I do not have bow thrusters, I consider them unnecessary and for the weak willed – this will likely change should we ever own a boat with them) so it is often tricky to get in and out of our bay. Surprisingly, we managed to manoeuvre through the marina without plonking the boat in one of the nature reserve islands dotted about and we serenely passed The Lotus restaurant and boardwalk without giving all of the gongoozlers a good laugh at my lack of boating skills. Feeling confident, I approach the exit from the marina onto the canal and plan to turn right. The channel out of the marina bears slightly left making it a tight turn for a long boat and, as usual, I bounce the bow off the towpath side of the canal opposite the marina entrance. Tut. Reverse says Keith, bring the front around to the right. Unfortunately, every time I reverse I go in the opposite direction I want to, despite watching at least a million people give ‘how to reverse a narrowboat’ tutorials on youtube. Anyway, after a bit of swearing and calling Keith a choice name or 3, he takes the time honoured approach and uses the pole to push me off the bank and gives us a shove in the right direction. (For completeness, I can’t enter the marina from this direction either!)

We pass through Willington without incident and once past The Dragon and under the bridge (laugh.living.resonated) I hand over the tiller to the old man. Now, it has occasionally been said that I am a control freak and don’t like other people playing with my toys. Tis true. I’ve reasoned through handing over control to Dad, thinking that he used to drive a big lorry therefore she should present no real problem to him as her length is in front where and so clearly visible. Ignoring my palpitations and fighting the urge to push him overboard to take back control of my boat, I explain the basics, most of which he has already got because the bugger was watching how I handle her and sneakily gave it all a bit of thought before I let him have a go.

As the day goes on, the old chap is doing pretty well (don’t tell him, I don’t need him being all confident and thinking he can do stuff on his own, I’ll turn up to the marina one day to find the boat has gone on holiday without me! Although I’m reasonably sure he’ll leave a note pinned to the pontoon.) Obviously I’m not going to leave him up here on his own, anything could happen, but there haven’t yet been any great dramas. Once I’ve got the idea into his head that he needs to slow down before passing moored boats and not as he gets to them it’ll all be good. Oh, and the boat positioning isn’t exactly where I would put her going into corners and bridges and past lines of boats but in the absence of actually crashing into things I probably shouldn’t correct him too much. But my control freakery is what it is and so I’ll keep up my running commentary. As a testament to Dads character, he completely failed to throw me into the canal all day 😂

We went up to Shobnall and turned in the winding hole opposite the chandlery (stole.lively.behind) and made our way back, stopping at Shobnall Fields for a lovely lunch. Fed and watered we made a move back towards Willington with a plan to stop at the water point in Horninglow. This water point is interesting for a number of reasons. It is on CRT moorings and directly opposite a bench which is frequented, for the large part of the year, by a local community of people who like to drink and smoke a bit. They generally disperse by about 3pm and are well known in the area. Keith is on the front of the boat as we come onto the water point and gives them a cheery wave. This is clearly construed as an invite to join us by a particular gentleman who staggers over the bridge to have a closer look at the boat and a friendly chat. How much to buy one? I’ve been thinking about taking my girlfriend on one of these for a holiday. How much would that be? Do they cost a lot to run? Do you let people borrow her? I’d pay somebody £2-300 for a whole day, just to surprise her and make her happy. How much for a week? Couple of days then. Just a day then. I might buy one. Bet I could easily save up a couple of hundred pounds. Bet it’s great fun. I think she’d enjoy it. Shall we come with you for a few nights? The cheerful litany follows us as we reverse off the water point and move under the bridge. We leave him waving at us still standing by the water point.

A lovely afternoon passed and we decided to stop outside The Dragon instead of going back into the marina for the night. We sit on the roof of the boat with a glass of wine and enjoy the early evening sunshine, chatting to the people passing by and rescuing Billy from the pub garden (he went in on the promise of a bit of steak from a nice lady but then couldn’t work out how to get back).

Bliss

The next day Keith and I move the boat up to the bit of canal just before the marina. I’m not keen on going back in and we decide to stay here for the night and take her in at the last possible moment. It is only 10 minutes cruising from The Dragon to the marina and we moor up early afternoon. When we come to turn a light on, we find we have very little power. Odd. We cruised all day the previous day and had no issues overnight. Interrogation of the battery panel and all of the little lights are red. Ooooo, that can’t be good. We try to start the engine, thinking we can limp into the marina and shoreline her but that’s a no go. Bugger.

We take off the starter battery and decide to take it home to charge it, still having no idea why the batteries are flat in the first place. That way we can get back to our mooring and organise someone who knows what they are doing to have a look. To walk back to the car from our current position is about 15mins. With a ginormous starter battery between the 2 of us it is at least a day. And a half. So continues our burgeoning tradition of regularly breaking down in variously inaccessible parts of the canal and our very slow acquisition of knowledge about the inner workings of our boat.