It's one of the hottest weeks of the year, so what brilliant idea did we have? "Lets go and sit in a hot tin box in a place where we're not allowed to move".
Well here we are on Herbie anyway, having a break from home. Actually it's OK, we have shade a few yards away and the open water of the marina does allow a cit of a breeze to blow across it. The boats are all sitting lower against the pontoons because the water level has dropped by about six inches.
Sexy socks eh?
I probed for the bottom with a pole and allowing for Herbie's draught (about 2ft at the back). I believe in nautical terms it's called taking soundings or sometimes swinging the lead -that sounds like me. I've been reading a book about Erebus, the ship that led Lord Franklin to his doom while trying to find the North West Passaage. Earlier in the book when the ship was exploring the Antarctic they were measuring depths of 1500 fathoms, that's 9000 feet! That's lot of rope! Meanwhile it looks like we have perhaps eighteen inches or more of water beneath the baseplate of the boat so were not in danger of grounding yet. At the bow end, near the bank the water is about six inches shallower.
I saw some photos of the Wormleighton resevoir which feeds this part of the South Oxford canal showing it to be nearing empty.
The marina is sealed off from the canal with sheets and stop planks but looking at it I couldn't really discern any difference in surface height either side of the stop.
I suspect that there might not be such a good seal at the bottom when the pressure difference is so small as the plastic sheet doesn't get pushed so hard. Is that right?
This weekend our grandson Jacob and his girlfriend Esme take over command of Herbie and ship's cat Gertie while we go to see our son Peter in Cambridge, then we'll be back for more going nowhere.
PS for anyone on the Thames, note this sign I saw in Marlow.
Don't say you weren't warned.
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