Graham was up and away on the Di Blasi to do a car shuffle at 6am. The car was retrieved from Hill Morton and moved to near Whittington for easy recovery once we had decided to stop. On the return journey to Jannock, the Di Blasi faltered and then stopped just before Hopwas so he had to strip down and clean the carburettor at the roadside before he could continue the journey.
Once back at Jannock, and breakfasted, we set off towards Polesworth and almost immediately lost all drive through the gearbox. A split oil cooler hose had dumped all of the gearbox oil into the engine bilge and so the PRM stopped working in protest. We tried to bind the hose with self amalgamating tape but it still leaked slightly but not so badly that we couldn't continue. We fitted a drip tray under the leak and then frequently stopped to put the oil it had caught back into the gearbox. At the top of Glascote locks we pulled over and Graham created a better fix by using a short piece of 3/4" rubber water hose that he split so that it would fit around the cooler hose and then tightened a jubilee around it as a compress. Voila! an oil tight repair. We then set off down through the locks, on through Fazely where we met a very offensive female live aboard who tried to reverse her boat into Jannock as we passed. I believe she was 'completely passed' or something that sounds similar! As we approached Hopwas bridge through a very crowded pub mooring a southbound boat decided that there was no way that he was going to give way to us, even though he had plenty of space to do so his side of the bridge, and came charging through leaving us with nowhere to move to in order to get out of his way. The crew of a small fibreglass day boat were very concerned that they would be crushed as he barged (sic) his way through. We finally moored up for the night at Whittington and were soon joined by Terry and Chris on nb Grace again. I took Simon back to his car so that he could return to Salford before Brenda and I then had a fruitless walk around the village trying to find a pub serving food. The Dog had a brand new owner who had not got the electricity connected yet and so was serving drinks using a generator. The Bell had an Anne Summers party on as the food season did not start until the end of June so we finally settled for a chinese takeout aboard Jannock. We then went next door to Grace for another pleasant evening with the Rigdens. During this session we learnt that the boat we had met at Hopwas had also given them grief at Fazely by not pulling over to allow them through even though they had started the manoeuvre. CutHog! Graham www.jannock.org.uk [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
