Ah, the sound of many a Canal Time and a cold snap following a decent week of half reasonable weather heralds the arrival of Oestre - or for the Christians amongst you - Easter and the crew of the good ship Wych Way decide to join the milling throngs out on the cut for a few days cruising.

Sat 15th April

Work finishes at mid-day on the Saturday and with no particular destination in mind we decide to head 'downhill'.  Pass through Stenson lock, cruise past the Ragley Boat Stop and half hour later find a nice secluded 'middle of nowhere' spot to spend the evening. Everyone is suited with this location nestled amongst the trees and listening to the various birdsongs, Jason is trying to teach his rubber fish how to swim (he says he's catching pike but I'm not so sure) and Em is out magnetic fishing. To anyone passing it looks like she has a long lead going down into the water so can't resist the opportunity to tell passing boaters that she's taking her scuba diving dog for a 'walk'.

As Em doesn't catch any magnetic fish, but does retrieve a stainless steel knife, she decides to join me repainting the side panel decoration in line with the proposed new colour scheme and Sall settles down to her crocheting.

The new colour scheme

Sun 16th April

Had a text last night from some friends of ours asking if we could collect a boat pole for them. They'd been wondering how to get one in the car then realised that the easiest way to move a 15ft  pole would be to put it on the roof of a boat - our boat. As we are heading in the general direction of Shardlow we phone those nice people at Millar Marine to make sure that they have a pole in stock and set off in their direction. So with a destination now in mind we aim for Millar's, collect the pole, turn around in Dobson's boat yard and head back 'uphill' with a view to using the same mooring as last night.

We stop off en-route to re-wire the fridge. Some time ago when we installed the washing machine we moved the fridge over to the other side of a drawer unit, a distance of around 2ft, but not having cable anywhere near thick enough I cheated by pairing up what I had. Following last night's flat battery episode I decide now is the time to put this right by using some seriously heavy gauge cable. So out with the fridge, the cooker, the washing machine etc. and a short while later we have a rewired fridge, a re-assembled kitchen and are back on the move.

Once moored up for the evening Rob takes up exploring and scrub bashing once more, Jason puts a coat of varnish on his latest model boat project and Em and I paint the other side panel. A brief 'who can climb highest up that tree' competition ensues and Jason wins by virtue of being able to climb on smaller limbs than me due to weighing around 1/2 what I do.

The batteries seem to hold their own for some hours but a  few hours of TV watching sees the voltage on the boat drop quite markedly so we run the engine for a brief spell to try and restore things. However, in the wee small hours Em wakes us up en-route to the bathroom to tell us that the fridge is making unhappy noises once more.

Mon 17th April

After treating ourselves to a decadent lounge in bed we get up around 9 and set off, determined to make sure that we clear Stenson lock early so that we don't get stuck in a huge queue. On the way there we find a large yellow life raft, stranded amongst some foliage. 

We decide to rescue it, reckoning that it probably belonged to the Stenson Bubble trip boat and give them a phone call to check. As they think it is theirs we take it in tow and tell everyone that we pass that it's our own private helipad - hence the big white 'H'.

It is not long before Jason works out that he could easily stand on the helipad so we bring it alongside and he steps on, complete with paddle to steer with. Much fun is had before finally returning it to the Bubble trip boat who are quite pleased to see it, also taking the opportunity to present them with their new boat pole before going up through the lock and homewards.

Once safely moored up I decide to try an experiment with the batteries. I know that they are all topped up with water and have had a really good charge on the cruise back so when we return to mains hook up I deliberately do not switch on the battery management system. This way we can run the rest of the boat on mains but the batteries will have the water pump, lighting and fridge load. I monitor the situation every 15 minutes for nearly 2 hours and see only a minimal voltage drop despite Em having a shower - using both water and shower pumps and the washing machine using the water pump for it's wash cycle.