Gloucester Sharpness Canal &the Tall Ships

Captains Log

Canal Date 27^th May 2017.

Cruising along the Gloucester & Sharpness Canal.

We have stayed on this canal for a few weeks now and we have very little desire to move off. It is a truly delightful place. All of the swing and lift bridges are manned and no locks at all. That all makes for a very relaxing time for us. We have been pottering up and down the canal with out much in the way of a plan; just where and when the mood takes us. Life is good!

We have found the delights of the Dockers Club in Sharpness. It is a very welcoming club with sensibly priced beers and excellent food at even better prices. Not trip along this canal is complete without visiting there.

We have had two trips into Gloucester Docks. It is nice there but it can be very busy but this time we were the only narrowboat on the pontoons. There were some white Tupperware boats on the wall on the other side. It is free to moor in the docks but it always costs me a small fortune when we walk round the town. Even though we don’t need or want anything; we always manage find a few things that we could not live without!

We were moored up at Purton when a Tall Ship, "The Earl of Pembroke" moored next to us. It was huge and made our boat look so tiny.

There ware several more Tall Ships arriving very soon as  is the Tall ships weekend in Gloucester Docks over the Bank Holiday weekend. I am sure it will be very nice to see them all in the dock but it will be far too busy for us. We will just watch them sail past us further down the canal.

While we were close to the vets we had our dogs pass ported so we can take them away if the mood takes us. We also had a canine tooth removed from our eldest dog; she was not too happy about that but very soon got over it!

I fitted a fancy fuel polishing kit to the diesel line in the winter. I like the idea very much and it had worked fine until recently. When I first had the kit I complained that the fuel pump supplied was 5/16” dia and the pipe fittings and the pipe were 3/8”. In my simple mind, that was just wrong and was bound to be unreliable. The company assured me that it would be fine. Well I was right and it started to leak, just a bit moist to start with then it started to dribble. The boat stunk of diesel and something had to be done. I had to remove the secondary pump and by-pass everything.

I will sort it out when I can get to a hydraulics company and find the right sized fittings.

We moved to one of our favourite mooring spots at Purton. There is a floating Pontoon there that is reserved for commercial traffic but there is a spot for one boat next to it and we grabbed it. While we were there the rest of the Tall Ships arrived for the festival and moored net to us. It was a magnificent sight; three tall ships all moored together and our little narrow boat almost touching them. It is the stuff that dreams are made from.

We shall wait for the bank holiday traffic to disperse before making our way back up the canal to Gloucester, then up the River Severn to Stourport and back to the Midlands. We should be on the Staffs & Worc’s Canal by mid June.