What a Lark!: Well push the bloody thing then....

Woke up to the forecasted heavy rain. We were in a bit of a quandary in that we needed water, a pump out, diesel, gas and to my mind most importantly deposit rubbish in a suitable receptacle. There is this boat yard in the very centre of the canals in Birmingham, its on a loop with one end of the loop impossible to make the turn to the right back towards the majority of the moorings, where we were moored. So the only way to get in there was for us to reverse past moored boats, in the swirling wind and pouring rain. The very thought filled me with horror but David was game. Well he was game when the rain stopped. No point in going off for the morning as we felt that other boats may all be wanting to do the same thing. So a couple of hours later, (A couple of hours spent mostly writing this blog), we set off.

Me waiting for clear precise instructions of my part, I wanted them given to me calmly and politely….

Well there was a bit of..

“Push the bloody thing then”

and

“No not there here, no, yes back there then”

and a

“Best get on the front” so I hotfooted it through to the front, then a very loud “No I need you here pushing that boat here NOW”

“Get on the side and push that boat away” So there I was on the slippery side, in the rain,shoving or maybe creating distance between us and the parked boats with my weight and our dangly bits. Then a trip boat came pooling past, (They don't even slow down even though we were somewhat over his side just then), reversing through a bridge, well I have to tell you Reader, he may get shirty but he did a truly splendid job, no tinks, no bashes and certainly no scratches. Into the arm and the jetty section for services runs along on a wooden jetty, but is very short for us being a 70ft boat and so with this wind pulling the front and back end in turn we moored up and David went off to find a man. In his absence of 5 mins another boat came along, a shorter boat and got onto the service section and nicked our turn, he nicked it because he was “Blocking” us being served first. This did nothing to improve the weather I can tell you. David was livid, the poor lad doing the services was helpless. We really had no option but to let him go ahead of us. So after a few sharp words the man said he would settle on a pump out and come back later, which is what happened. So then pump out, gas, rubbish, water and diesel all done. Off we set to re-moor again and when we had, the whole task had taken two hours. TWO HOURS.

So we had lunch and went out for a walk having a look at the moorings all around the place the rain returned with a vengeance as we were outside the CART offices at Cambrian Whalf, so cold and wet we returned to the boat.