Date: Monday 28th September: Diary reads: Arrived at Retford Marina at 09:20, spent the morning and up to about 2:15pm washing, drying and touching up the paintwork of Chesterfield Canal Trip Boat 'Seth Ellis' in readiness for a documentary/promotion film shoot next Saturday. At 2:15 only a small area of touching up was left to do (approx 5 feet long but unreachable from mooring. We decided to move the boat to the opposite bank of the canal from its finger mooring to bankside. We completed the move of approx. 25 metres and the painting by 2:35pm. At 2:36pm we started return journey (25 metres) back to mooring. After 5 metres the engine stalled, we restarted same, engaged reverse gear and engine immediately stopped again. We paid a visit to the weed hatch to find about 25 metres of semi-rigid transparent plastic sheeting about 50 cm wide inextricably moulded around the prop. I soon liberated around 20 metres of plastic, but after a further 2 hours and minimal progress down the weed hatch with a junior hacksaw, a boat hook, two Stanley knives and cuts to several fingers, we gave up and called RCR. An hour later an engineer arrived tooled up for the removal of the obstructing material. He descended into the weed hatch and after about 3/4 hour emerged with the first of many small pieces of plastic, finally some time later in the gathering gloom of the evening after a fabulously beautiful sunset over Retford Town Lock, he produced a length of screwed up plastic about 3 metres long and announced that the prop would actually turn (it was previously locked solid). Over the next half hour numerous other bits of plastic were liberated from the depths and finally in darkness we were able to return 'Seth' to her mooring and set off homeward. Unfortunately there had been a big fire at Clarborough (on my route home), and police had closed both the roads that I could use to get home. Consequently a detour of an additional nine miles was required just to finish the day with a flourish. Tuesday 29th September. I Met the Chesterfield Canal Trust's 'Python' boat crew at Python's mooring just outside Shireoaks village to help 'ease' the side rubbing strakes so that the notoriously narrow Stret lock could be more easily negotiated at the next passage (the boat having been found to be marginally wider than the lock in places). After some smoothing of the already paint free patches on the strakes we decided to check the dimensions of the three Shireoaks locks in preparation for the official handover of the boat to the Trust by BW on Friday week (9th October). The first lock about 100 metres above the mooring was successfully negotiated at the third attempt with the help of flushing water down into the lock and full power from the HR2 aboard Python, a very tight squeeze indeed. The next lock, Shireoaks Middle Lock, a further 50 metres or so ahead was less co-operative. Try as we may we could not get the last few feet of the boat into the lock. After reversing out of the lock we found that the canal was just wide enough to turn the boat around (with only a couple of inches to spare). Reversing into the lock proved no more successful than entering forwards. So eventually we were obliged to limp back to Python's mooring to end the morning's work. Removing the albatross from around my neck, I went home at lunchtime to rest my sore knee and leave the others to apply plans B (a visit to the pub) and C (try again to slim Python enough to pass through the economically sized locks on the recently restored part of the canal). In summary, the best part of two days boating, distance covered - less than 350 metres. Having cut my fingers with the rigid and sharp edged plastic under water the previous day and being a little worried about infection I checked up about Weil's disease on the internet, I rang my doctor's surgery as advised and was comforted by being told that my tetanus jabs were up to date, and not to worry about Weil's disease for at least a few days unless my cuts became infected. However they were more concerned about the risk of me having possibly contracted hepatitis from the canal water, something which hadn't even crossed my mind. Arthur Naylor nbs Seth Ellis and Python
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