So then, Reader, we are here!

So we are actually boating, well when I say that its only partially true....  

We set off after morning coffee and the usual faffing associated with the beginning of the season, that is endless up to the car trips loading it with all the things that you brought you didn't need like seven pillows, then muttering about all the useful things we left behind, like the key to the padlock and the sausages.

So after morning coffee and paying the leckkie bill David started the engine and varroom....  

He has to reverse down the lines of boats on both sides, somewhat annoyingly the owners were mostly aboard..... looking.... but trying not to look as if they are looking, as we slowly inch past.  
I always feel its a bit of an ordeal for the very first thing to do at the seasons start when you are trying to remember which way the tiller goes. 
I am on the pointy end with a fender going to each side "Just incase".  But today, even with a stiff breeze it was incident free.  He's very clever.

Last night when we arrived it wasn't so incident free.  The water pump is located under the front step and over the winter its snugged up with a cosy blanket on it.  I took the blanket off it and replaced the step.  Hours later as I sit down for a well earned cup of tea after making the boat only half way ship shape, I was dismayed to see water coming through the join in the wood from the said step, there was over a centimetre of water sloshing about.
A cry went up which may or may not have included an  expletive, all hands with sponges and buckets reported for duty and then considerable time was spent on knees with the torch looking for the source..... Its almost impossible to see in a wet box where water is coming from so in the end we went to bed.  I was nervous incase WaL sank, but it didn't stop me sleeping and this morning the box had dried out.   

Moral of the story, if there's a water leak ignore it and it'll go away.

The bailing continued for sometime till we got bored.

 So where was I?  Oh yes after coffee off we went.  We turned northwards for a change out of the Marina.  About twenty minutes later, David declared himself hungry and moored up.  But there is method in our madness as tomorrow summer arrives in Leicestershire and I want to sit in it as I've not done that since Antigua which I now six long cold months ago.
Summer has arrived today at home and my eldest has sent me a photo of herself on her sun bed of which I was a tad envious.

Mini island for swan nesting in the marina.

Hard to tell but we are turning left this time instead of right as per usual.

Towpath mud is drying up finally.

Leicester Arm of the Grand Union is one of the very best canals even in winter (But its summer tomorrow)

 Now I have brought with me the book Idle Women by Susan Woolfit to re-read, in it I seem to remember she talks of a house looking down on the canal on the Leicester Arm.  I wonder if it is this one.  When I've read it I'll tell you, unless Reader you already know?

Top left.

Its all go here.

No dinner yet but lunch was vile butternut squash soup which I won't be buying again from Waitrose, but David liked it so he might.