Life at Great Haywood Marine Services Ltd

Our stay here was from Monday 1st - Monday 8th March 2010 whilst the very friendly staff reblacked the hull of Rock n Roll with Comastic and George and I rubbed down the damaged paintwork up to the gunwale ready for repainting. The two Johns and 'the painter' (sorry don't think we got your name) were extrememly helpful with advise regarding the work we were doing giving us demonstrations of 'how it should be done'

stairway to heaven - a bit dicey on frost mornings, but we managed ok

the first coat of Comastic makes all the difference

the rubbing down to bare metal of the damaged areas took a few days and a lot of elbow grease!

Since most mornings were very frosty and took a while to warm up and with it cooling down quickly in the afternoon it took us 7 days to put 2 coats of enamel paint the tunnel bands (cream/red), black up to the gunwale, and blue non-slip on the bow and gas locker - we were very pleased with the results.

nb Tea-Pee has a mooring on the farm shop's line - Sylvia who lives aboard feed the local wildlife and this pair of mallards walked purposely down the towpath each morning for their breakfast, but on this particular morning Sylvia was nowhere to be seen so they climbed onto the bow and knocked on the cratch window!

Waiting for paint to dry is not very interesting and Molly still needed to be walked - I'm sure you will recognise the very elegant Essex Bridge at Shugborough where the River Sow meets the River Trent

I like the shadows on this picture

Essex Bridge with the railway arch in the background

after some dramatic sunsets (this one taken at 18:30 on Thursday 4th)

preceeded very cold early mornings - minus 5 at 06:30 on the Friday 5th.

Saturday 6th was OwnerShips day (Great Haywood Marine Services look after the handovers and maintenance of these boats) and on the Friday AB Tuckey arrived to hoist Hamish their electric narrowboat ..

... onto the launcher and into the water ready for tomorrow.  We didn't see many prospective buyers on the Saturday, but apparently OwnerShips did quite well.  There were more people about on Sunday though as the marina were also holding an open day.

On Sunday 7th at 06:45 to temperature had dropped to minus 9!

after another dramatic sunset ...

 

... Monday 8th dawned at minus 12 degrees - it was COLD; the marina was frozen over once again and we wondered if we would get back in today ..

.. but after moving a few more boats about and in and out of the water it was our turn

With the tractor John backed the launcher into the water ..

.. the rear axle is ready to be lowered

touchdown!

the quality of these pictures are not brilliant; they are snapshots from a video I took at the time

the bow starts to move off the launcher

and we're away!

Thank you lads, we'll see you again in a couple of years for another go!

the concentration John - sorry I couldn't resist this one!

We moved to the junction for a couple of nights to enable me to catch up with all the accumulated washing, visit the dentist and then we're off north to Stone for a while as George has dental appointments here on 24th March and 7th April - so the start of journey to York is delayed yet again, but we'll get there!