Cosgrove

It rained quite heavily early this morning, and having had three days of getting up at 4am I quite enjoyed staying in bed listening to it.  It rained again through breakfast time.  But it was dry after that and I decided to set off around 10am.  I wanted to turn at Kingfisher Marina, and as I approached the preceding bridge a boat pulled out and looked as it if was also turning, so I held back.

In fact it was going into the dry dock, so I went ahead and turned.  There was a boat moored on the no mooring bit opposite the marina entrance which didn’t help; it turned out it was also going into the dock.  I retraced my steps, carried on past my mooring, then past our marina, and on to Cosgrove.  I wanted to turn again above the lock, and it was quite busy there.  The trip boat was there as usual, but it had one of the day boats behind it, and a boar was on the lock landing.  The Buckingham Canal work boat was moored on the other side too, which limited my choice of places to stick the bow.  I got round ok though, and completed the turn before a boat coming up the lock had got to the top.

I moored up in a nice open spot in the village, by the house next to the horse tunnel.  This afternoon I have done various jobs.  The hole in the engine room wall that suffered water damage needed filling, and I’ve also tackled the window cills.  The windows all had wooded corner trims, most of which have come unstuck and dropped off over the years.  Some of them were water damaged too.  I finally got round to sanding them all down, and have applied a coat of Danish oil.

I’ve also sanded all the window cills themselves, removing all the old flaking varnish.  There’s not much you can do bout the discolouration caused by water, but they all looked better just sanded back.  They’ve all also had a coat of Danish oil.  They all need three coats, 6 hours apart — so another will go on this evening, and hopefully I’ll have time to do another tomorrow.  Then all the missing corners can be stuck back on.  No individual job takes very long, but there are quite a few of them, and there’s quite a bit of waiting time in between.

I have also set up a second boat test for tomorrow, so it’ll be a busy day.

4 miles, 0 locks.  (5 miles, 0 locks)