The first week or so
Rather than make posts summarising every day in excruciating detail, in this post I’m going to tell you about out first week or so we spent aboard Carla. I’ll be honest, I can’t remember dates exactly, and I’m mostly having to go on photo timestamps since I didn’t make many notes while cruising. Maybe I’ll get better at that…
After finding our first overnight mooring at Uxbridge, keen to keep travelling north in a bid to at least get outside the M25, I set about with a couple of maintenance tasks. Don’t worry, we’ll get to the cruising shortly. One of the more important things to do every time you finish cruising for the day is to turn a little screw on something called the ‘stern gland’. This brass assembly is fairly important - it pumps grease into the area between the boat and the propeller shaft (the thing that turns the propeller that makes the boat go). This area is also ‘packed’ with a ring of cotton mixed with graphite.
The stern gland
If this area isn’t stuffed with graphite and grease, canal water goes from being in the canal to being in your boat. This isn’t ideal. After a day or so of cruising, it’s not unusual that this area might be dripping slightly. A turn or two of the stern gland usually resolves this. However, I could no longer turn it. All the grease had been used up. Fear not, a couple of youtube searches, a trip to the nearby chandlery and some greasy hands later and we were sorted. The prop shaft is still dripping too much after a cruise for my liking, so it likely needs to be repacked. Some scary internet posts suggested that if you get this wrong you can sink your boat, so for the first time at least I’ll ask someone who has a clue to do it and I can watch.
Anyway, on to the fun stuff.
The cruise from Uxbridge north was delightful and pretty easy. We travelled through Harefield Moor, under lush greenery and rusted pipe bridges. The surrounding area was full of lakes and wildlife, with me pointing out every heron to Erin. Continuing north, we moored just outside/inside Rickmansworth (just before bridge 174 if you want a really nice place to moor). It’s a short walk from the big Tesco (which also has mooring points!), relatively calm and we didn’t struggle to find a good spot. I decided to treat myself to a bottle of scotch - something I’ve not done for at least a year - and we finished cruising early, instead opting to watch the canal into the night. Passing us in the opposite direction as a bloke operating a mobile pump-out boat (it pumps poo, in case you were wondering).
Boating’s a hard life…
The next couple of days would prove to be a bit of a slog. From Rickmansworth to Berkhamsted via Hemel Hempstead consisted of 31 locks over a 13 mile stretch. However, after our first couple of locks we began sharing the work with the aforementioned pump-out guy. Despite spending several hours cruising with him, we never exchanged names. After some internet sleuthing, Erin has determined he’s probably a chap called Warren (and will henceforth be referred to as such. Sorry if that’s not your name, mate!), and he operates his pump-out service on the south end of the Grand Union Canal. All of the locks in the southern part of the GUC are wide locks - i.e., they can fit two 6’ narrowboats in them. And this makes things easier in two ways. Firstly, you’ve got more hands, which shares the work. Secondly, with two boats in the lock, they tend to want to bash around a little when you’re filling or emptying (mostly filling).
I can’t stress enough how much of a fantastic help Warren was. As well as giving us plenty of tips for operating locks more efficiently (if you’re narrow… just open one gate) and general canal wisdom, his demeanour put our minds at ease that we weren’t completely screwing everything up and being a nuisance on the canal. I think we travelled a little slower than he did, but every mile or so he’d stop as someone requested (or had previously scheduled) a pump-out. He did also tease us about wanting to spend winter somewhere warmer rather than remaining on the cut… maybe enough to convince us that maybe one winter aboard is worth doing. After 10 or so locks with Warren we parted ways, only to see him at what I presume is his permanent mooring the very next day. Cheers, mate.
Actually, it if weren’t for a trick picked up from Warren, we might have been stuck for a little while. Locks along the canal come in a wide variety of states of (dis)repair. Some have out-of-use paddles (the things that let water in and out of the lock), some have gates that don’t perform a very good seal so leak water… Lock 62’s bottom gate was so leaky that the water flow against the top gates was simply too powerful to be overcome by human alone. Thankfully, we also have a 42HP diesel engine connected to about 15 tons of steel and ballast. If you press the bow of your boat against the troublesome top gate and absolutely floor your engine, it can be enough to force it open enough that the lock equalises and the gate will open. Note that this will only work for top gates since they open outwards and bottom gates open inwards.
After passing through Hemel Hempstead, we moored by a pub in a very small village called Winkwell. Prior to getting to the pub, we had to operate a big electric swing-bridge. This is, as the name implies, a bridge that swings open. On our rental holiday a few months ago, we got to operate manual ones (similar to a lock, you just push). This one, however, required unlocking the controls using a special key that all narrowboaters should have (if you’re interested, it looks to be a 6 or 7-pin Yale), and pressing some buttons. This makes some noises, lowers some barriers (that stop actual cars on the actual road! We shouldn’t be allowed to do that should we?!) and rotates this huge construction so we can potter through at 3mph. Very fun. Then we had a pint.
Pints at the Three Horseshoes, Winkwell
It’s at this point that I’ll leave this post since it feels like it’s getting a bit long. The next post, which hopefully won’t take 3 weeks to write and publish, will cover the remaining days until our 2-week holiday in Ireland, which we’ve just got back from. And here are a couple more pictures from this journey.
Coots! I kept calling them moorhens until Erin actually looked it up and corrected me
Some big rusty thing. An old warehouse? We love finding abandoned buildings along the canal