Half Eight in the Morning

At 2.30 am this morning we were woken up by a phonecall from our neighbour on Nb Sirius. James didn't get to it in time to pick it up but it was immediately clear what she was calling about- half a wooden rowing Eight was floating past our window. Eager to prevent it causing a hazard to river users the next morning, James leapt into action wearing little more than a dressing gown and no shoes. By the time I'd put some shoes and a jacket on he'd managed to pull it into the bank using our long boat pole and so i fetched some bits of rope to fix it alongside the Duck. At 30 ft or so even half an Eight's pretty long!

We learnt then that our neighbour had heard the half boat being thrown in from outside the boathouse opposite our mooring. We let the boatman of another closeby boathouse, who she had also alerted, know that we'd secured the rogue bit of boat and he promised to tell the relevant people where the could collect it from this morning. If they don't turn up, it would work well as a fender to keep pesky rowers off our paintwork!