The Fugitive

As you may know, we have been helping out a mooring-less and engine-less boater.

While we're on the subject of things that end '-less', you could also add 'thank'......

Yes.

It's been tricky.

The gentleman ran out of water again. Once more, Pippin to the rescue, though this time it was more The Boat-mobile than the eponymous widebeam.

A trip to The Scilly Aisles Supermarket got an unfeasibly large amount of bottled water.

The second trolleyful had The Hairdresser's car packed thus:

I then had to transport the water from the car to the visitor mooring on which the gentleman was rapidly going aground on his own beef-bones.....

The distant tree-line marks the edge of our landlord's field and the beginning of that owned by GOBA.

Fortunately, our landlord was on hand with the mooring golf buggy to move the cargo from the car boot to nearer a rather dry narrowboat.......

View of the Boat-mobile from the other side of the mooring......

How the bottles were trans-shipped from where the buggy left them to the boat, seen below:

Did I mention a stile had to be negotiated in the process?

Anyway, the water was delivered.

It was so much fun, I decided to do it all again, went back to Tesco, and purchased another 100 litres....

The gentleman did pay me for the water, and generously rounded-up the money by 50p to offset my petrol.... (total mileage:12......), plus I took all the empties to the tip at Milton for recycling......

Then I got grumped at because he'd had to spend all afternoon pouring water into his tank.

Morale flagged.................

However, The Boat-man is true to his calling, and was on hand to tow the moribund one from 48hr mooring to 48hr mooring, trying to keep the customer, and the river bailiff, satisfied.......

The above is a record of myself and The Buoy Wonder engaged in towing the gentleman's boat through the lock and onto E.A. water......

This has gone down in the log as 'The Farmer's Field Fiasco'.....

.....over which, perhaps, a veil should decently be drawn.

Suffice to say, that which we thought was a likely temporary home for the gentleman proved not to be the case. The natives were far from friendly.

(And I could have really done without the proffered advice from a moored-up narrowboat whose occupier sought to improve my boat handling skills.

While I was trying to concentrate.

In the dark......)

T'was a truly trying night........

Anyway, we gave up, towed the gentleman back to the 48's at Clayhithe where we had started some hours previously, then went to the pub........

However, by now the powers that be both at GOBA and The Camcon were getting properly irate about the gentleman's continued presence on their moorings and waters.

Clearly, Something Had To be Done.......

James and I thought we'd have one last bash at getting the engine to run....

This involved stripping the 'spares' F.I.P. of it's threaded studs so we could fabricate a bracket for the throttle control (whoever had 'reconditioned' the engine that the muppet sold to our gentleman had handily sawn off the studs on the original F.I.P., leaving nothing to attach a bracket to, no matter how craftily fettled......

I removed the studs from the spare, only to find the last one bent like a banana.....

The studs I'm talking about are bottom left of this picture......

BOLLARDS!!!!!!!!!!!

Now, at times like these, it pays not to panic, lose your temper, or bugger off to the pub to drown your sorrows......

If you do any of the above, you won't do like Grandad Coles (b.1904-d.1992) and take the nuts off the straight end, put them on the bent end, clamp the stud in a vice and tweak it straight using judicious and gentle pressure from 'fitter's fingers' and a suitable A/J.......

Et viola! (Et merci beaucoup, Grandpere, pour l'idee.....)

So, another potential hurdle overcome.....

This all occured last Sunday, by the way. Mark couldn't play as he was requested and required to be in Aldershot.... So it was down to me and James.

I think we did quite well considering, tin bashing a bracket of sorts out of some stainless steel salvaged from the back of a long-dead waste-water pump (never, ever, EVER throw anything away.....). Drilling the holes for the F.I.P. studs proved too much, though. We managed one, then broke three drill bits in quick succession.

Time to stop and go to the pub.

And there endeth the session.

However, as previously mentioned, both Dr Noon of the Cam-con ( I can never hear her name without thinking she supervises the running of the river from some vast subterranean lair under an extinct volcano while stroking a white cat with a leather-gloved hand....) and someone called Sid from GOBA were getting mightily peeved about the gentleman's presence.

In a riverside hostelry, on the outskirts of Gotham......

Okay, you've all been there, done that, and are, by now, up to your eyes in the merchandise, never mind tee-shirts...

Yes, we towed him to Ely.

Pippin needed to pump out anyway, so I arranged with Amy Duck to borrow James and the cross straps for the day.

The cross straps didn't work too well. It was windy, and at 70', the gentleman's boat is an unwieldy beast.

It wasn't long before we gave up on cross-strapping and breasted-up for the long trip to Ely.

On the way we passed A Harbinger of Winter, this beautiful yacht out of the water for the season's end, ready to be snugged down under cover until next year....

This is one of the things they teach you at Super-Hero School:

And don't tell Amy, okay?

A view of near parallel sterns....

A close-up reveals an ecosystem harbouring some previously unknown vegetation...... Sadly, our attempt to have it classified as a S.S.S.I. (thereby negating the need to move the boat at all) was met by a glare I can only describe as 'stony'......

Well, it was worth a try.....

Onward to Ely! A narrowboat swerves to avoid us.....

And The Blessed Isle Approacheth.....

Surely, someone ought to get some solar panels up there.. Think of the feed-in tariff!

We fought our way through novice rowers (James doing sterling work in the bows of Pippin, inviting all and sundry to 'ave a look, scull/pair/eight', 'hold it up', or on one particularly nerve jangling occasion, 'just go for the bloody gap you nit-wit'....all, of course, underscored by his wearing a Chesterton R.C. jacket for added credence).

There are no photos of this bit. We were rather too busy trying not to maim or drown anyone......

S'anyway, we eventually wind up at the winding hole, to find someone had very considerately parked this in it....

No winding to be done there then, at least not with a 61' widebeam attached to a 70' narrowboat.

So we moored the narrowboat up to the pump-out/waterpoint and I took Pippin downstream to wind while james pegged it up to the local chandlery to purchase a hose connector which the gentleman required if he was going to get any water that day.....

'Area Denial' or 'The Winding Hole As Caravan Park'.......

James oversaw the business of Pippin's pump and rinse while the narrowboat's water tank was replenished.

I took the opportunity to nip to Sainsbury's for provisions.

Oh come on! It was a long trip back, which had to be done solo as The Buoy Wonder was coxing a rowing outing in Cambridge so jumped on the train at Ely quick-smart...

We left the narrowboat moored up safely near the station and Tesco, then parted company.

and I was alone at the last, but for the sky.......