Swan and Bottle to the Uxbridge Boat Centre.

Saturday 11th April.

Swan and Bottle to the Uxbridge Boat Centre, 0.6 miles.

Last night we were both looking forward to a good night’s kip, as we knew that today would be the beginning of a week’s hard work. So neither of us were too chuffed when we did not get a decent nights sleep. Keith did not sleep too well, just because he was thinking of what was going to happen today. I on the other hand did not sleep because of a selfish boater. Last night as always I made the back stove up, this took place at 8.30pm and as always I had the back doors open to allow the smoke to dissipate into the night air. There was not a sound from any of the three boats moored behind us. But by the time we headed off to bed, which was 10.45pm, I could hear a boat engine running, one of the three boats behind us was running its engine. To say I was miffed was an under statement, but I was hardly going to go out in my PJ’s to find the culprit, so I closed the back cabin and to be honest the engine did not sound too loud, so I thought it would not disturb our sleep too much, even though your not suppose to run your engine after 8pm, but obviously this person was extremely selfish and disrespectful. I did sleep until something jolted me into waking up. Feeling all hot and bothered I got up to get a drink and was totally incensed to still hear the boat's engine running. I got back into bed and began to wonder if perhaps something had happened to the person onboard, maybe they had fallen overboard, so could not turn their engine off, or maybe they had died onboard from carbon monoxide poisoning, as we are too well aware it does happen. No sooner had those thoughts gone through my mind the boat's engine was turned off and peace was returned to the cut. But now I was wide awake and despite trying to go back to sleep, it never really happened. So Keith and I were now both awake, and waiting for a time which it was more acceptable to get up.
Just recently I have been reading other peoples blogs when they also talk about disrespectful boaters and I can now add this event to the long list of things that are really totally out of order, by people who have no respect for others. If this boater needed to run their engine at such a late hour due to boat problems, then ok fair enough, but surely they would have the decency to knock on the other boats to explain their actions. That is what we would have done.
After a disrupted nights sleep, we got up and had breakfast and I walked Paddy. It was raining which made for a damp start. At 8.35am we left the Swan and Bottle mooring to head for the Boat Centre, where the dry dock was waiting for us to enter. We are sharing the dry dock with Chrissie and Paul on NB Anjuna. They are a lovely couple and we will greatly enjoy our week in dry dock with them. I am quite sure we will have a laugh whilst doing the hard work.
It took sometime for the water to drain out of the dry dock, so we did not start work on the boats until after lunch time. Paul suggested that because Hadar's hull was much cleaner than their boat's, that we should use the pressure washer first, which was really nice of him, because they had arrived in the dry dock first and we thought they should use it first.Keith got to work with the jet washer cleaning Hadar’s hull off. Apart from where the ice took the blacking off the bow over the winter, Hadar’s hull has faired extremely well, she was pretty clean. We then set about rubbing down the stern as the red, black and white needs repainting. We now have to wait for the hull to dry so that we can start blacking tomorrow all being well. I will post more photographs as we progress.