Mid Summer

So here we are, the Summer Solstice. This is as long a day as we are going to get! We plan to make the most of it by continuing the second coat of undercoat which we started yesterday. We had hoped to do both sides of the boat, but events intervened, such that we ended up co-ordinating the mooring of a flotilla of boats which came to moor with us in the Jesus Lock basin!

Why were we moored in the basin in the first place?


That's why!

Midsummer Fair has begun setting up, and all residential boaters who normally moor on the Common are allowed to colonise the visitor moorings at Jesus Lock for as long as the fair is in town. We got there on Thursday, as did Kestrel, and soon other boats began to arrive. Some have gone out of town as well, but we would really rather stay in Cambridge!

We spent Sunday afternoon (after a lazy moring reading the paper) sanding and painting one side of the Duck in another layer of undercoat. It's coming up very nicely, although doesn't look any diiferent in photographs- still the same lurid blue. We were considering turning the boat to do the other side, when a flotilla of shiny narrowboats arrived, all within about 20 minutes of each other (they are part of a cruising club and had come from Nottingham!). So the basin soon resounded with the sound of bowthrusters, and sparkled with their shiny brass mushroom vents, dollies and tiller pins (from which coiled ropes dangled). Adrian the River Bailiff was about, and instructed them not to moor on the lock side of the basin. This left us to find spaces for them, breasted up to the boats already moored up. We would have been happy for them to moor against us, but there was a little plastic cruiser behind us, whose width meant that they couldn't. So they ended up truple breasting against Kestrel and Sirius. Merchant unfortunately already had Samson double moored against them. This all means that the Riverboat Georgina is going to struggle to wind in the basin... But Adrian seemed happy with the set up...


Jesus Lock basin yesterday

We had already contacted Caxton and Matilda Rose who are on their way down the Ouse that this week would not be ideal for visiting Cambridge, as most of the visitor moorings are full. We suggested that perhaps they explore the Little Ouse to Bedford first and return to Cambridge when the fair's been and gone!