Sunday 22 July 2018

Of Yet Another Abandoned Journey

This is my temperature gauge.



Take note. It becomes part of this story.

"Blimey, you're late!" exclaimed The Percussionist, "I never take my books in before you!"


I set off recently, later than usual in the year, to deliver my accounts books, records and assorted paperwork to the accountant. His office is a glorious six-hour journey by boat, which is to say a less glorious thirty-minutes in the van. These last few years I have opted for the two-day return boat-trip. Part of the reason I was late delivering my paperwork this year is because I had to wait for a two or three-day window to become available. Given the inauspicious record of taking the boat on various journeys over the past six years and the likelihood of something going amiss (given my breakdown to progress ratio) I try to leave at least one extra day for a journey. Just as well.

If I haven't used the engine for a while it is usually a bit smoky to start with. I can never remember which colour smoke is good smoke and which colour is abandon ship type smoke, although I suppose the latter would in the extreme be accompanied by flames and crackling noises. Running at higher revs tends to produce a darker kind of smoke. After a while that becomes unpleasant, so I ease back on the speed and the smoke disappears. I am also an avid watcher of the dials indicating temperature (see above), oil pressure and battery charging. It was in this state that I was heading accountant-wards.

Four hours into the journey the engine stopped. I should have recognised a spike in temperature, but to get the view in the above picture I have to be crouched down and level with the gauge. Glancing at the gauge from a standing position and at an acute angle, can instil a false sense of security, as has been proven a few times in the past and, as it happened, again on this particular occasion. Luckily, in my unpowered state, I didn't crash, but I was twenty feet from either bank - definitely afloat, definitely adrift and thankfully, with no one within earshot, sight, or probably miles, to bear witness to an audible squeal of anguish and a mild outburst of language that would have made my mother frown in disapproval.

I have mentioned in the past that the shape of my boat is not exactly standard. The cabin sides are nearly vertical. The upside is that this offers me more space inside the boat, but there are couple of downsides to this phenomenon too. the less important one of these is that the wider roof is more prone to buckling caused by expansion under the sun's heat. The more significant one is that the nearly vertical sides perform the function of a sail. Eventually my "sail" placed the bow on to the bank off the port side. I ran along the gunwale to grab the bargepole in order to poke about in the undergrowth to find a safe and relatively solid place to risk jumping on to with the centre rope. I landed among reeds and nettles that towered above me and eventually negotiated the steep bank to pin the boat in place - with amazingly few stings. After that it was a matter of agility and juggling to pull the boat in as close as possible to fix the bow and stern ropes to the stakes I'd hammered in.

Once no longer adrift there was nothing I could do but wait. The engine took a long time to cool. Maybe I was being too cautious? I opened the cap to the engine's header tank and added a little water. After a slow fill I had enough to be able to see what would happen if I turned the engine over. It actually fired up first time, so I let it run for a couple of hours. Naturally I kept a very good eye on the gauges and the space under the engine for any signs of leakage. I saw nothing significant, but by this time, it was too dark to continue my journey, so I decided to stay where I was overnight and make another decision in the morning ... assuming there was still sufficient coolant in the engine and it hadn't leaked out overnight.

The level did not drop at all. With my limited knowledge I found this partly confusing and partly a good sign. I decided I was going to risk making it back to my home mooring and abandon any attempt to take my books to the accountant via river. This time there was also to be no playing silly games with identifying shades of smoke. I kept the revs right down and crept north at no more than 2mph. The journey back took me eight hours, but that involved an unexpected encounter ...

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