Summer Cruise#2-Day57/58

 

Well, day 57 (Tuesday) was OK, nowhere as warm but good for paintng. I did the maroon tunnel flashing again and Viv did the gloss on the side hatch. I did some more blacking and then we used the Osmo external oil on the exposed wood bits. Can’t understand why anyone would use varnish anymore or any of these “so and so always uses this Veruuca oil“ on wood. I put decent yacht varnish on my wooden seats at the stern when we first bought the boat but, as with all varnishes, you turn your back and they crack, peel and then let the water in. The wood goes manky and will eventually fall apart. Sanding the seats back to the bare wood was then the only option. This German Osmo oil works a treat – it’s a combination of natural oils and makes the wood impervious to water, mold etc plus its not sealed, it still breathes and so has no skin to crack or peel. Brilliant.

Toby sprained a front paw and back paw so was limping badly. Today he made it to the woods and around the track inside, so that was good.  The day was a bit dull and so we had to run the engine for about 45 mins.

I chatted with a guy on the boat, Warsteiner, obviously a guy who likes his beer! He was busy doing remedial paintwork too.

Then the day got a bit busier – kind of rush hour – I guess lots of boats had come up the locks at either end of this long pound. One boat from Market Harborough weren’t given a map and so had no idea where they were or where they should go! “Is there anything up there?“ they shouted as they went past – Crick, I replied and then they stopped and moored, so I went to chat.  I wanted to clarify that this isn’t Crick! They were happy that it was only an hour and a half away.

Despite having 141 TV channels (yeah! The black knob works again!), there really was nothing worth watching. So read a Kindle book time. They keep pushing their free or 99p books at us so I’ll try a few.

Saw a hare in the field opposite, managed a fuzzy photo, well, it was dark and zoomed in (well done me ickle Panasonic). So nice and peaceful here.

Taking it easy, a pipe & Laphroig.
Late evening hare
Isolated and beautiful

Wednesday was forecast to be wet, wet, wet and lo, it became fact. So, indoors jobs . . . Viv was doing finances . . Moving some of our savings to gain an extra 0.5%! Gotta try. Hopefully the rain will ease later and we can do some more painting. Yippee. I’ve set up the bread machine to do a Rye & Carraway loaf but will have to work out the timings as the heaty bit at the end of its cycle, is the bit we’ll need the engine on for! Meanwhile and rather trivially, my lunch snack of our ensalada plus a tin o’fish consisted of Sainsbury’s “mackerel fillets in spicy tomato sauce“, they’ve always been a strange flavour, nice but odd . .  So I read the tin and rather surprisingly I found out why . . . packed in Denmark and with . . Sugar, spirit vinegar, salt, orange peel, chilli pepper, garlic, allspice, chilli, cinnamon, clove, coriander, cumin, fennel, fenugreek, ginger, nutmeg, paprkia, pepper, star anise and turmeric. Wow! Not a bad snack, oily fish and all that spice. Probably around 60p a tin??

Batteries down to 73% but the sun is trying to peep out.