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About this blog

a narrowboat in a white bikini

Entries in this blog

persuasion pays off

It's been weeks, no months now that I have been persuading the Man in my life that buying a yacht would be a great idea.   At first he was a definite no, based on the fact that he had no reason but thought if we haven't enjoyed narrowboating then why would be enjoy sailing? Plus he wanted to go back from France.   Then he started to warm a little to the idea when I said I don't ever want to get to a point in my life where I have regretted NOT doing something.   Then I imparted my thoughts
honey ryder

honey ryder

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I see a dry dock and I want to paint it black

Two and a bit years have passed since the last mammoth effort of stripping the hull back to bare metal and sorting out a loppy looking bottom.   it took three weeks of very very hard work back in March 2007. first Hull service part 1 first hull service part 2 first hull service part 3 first hull service part 4 first hull service part 5   Ive been holding back from booking the drydock for fear of the hard work to come, but there is only so long you can do that before you really do have
honey ryder

honey ryder

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Exit stage left

Time to depart our dark and dusty dry dock cave like place and head back out into the bright world outside.   Heading back across London probably to see Victoria park and Limehouse for one last time from a narrowboat this summer. Five more weeks of canal time, five more weeks of packing boxes and emptying Honey Ryder. She is going to a new home this August and I am to be temporarily homeless.   Mr X is going back to France for a while, I am now starting my search for a new place to liv
honey ryder

honey ryder

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migration

My blog is migrating.   It is moving here:   http://jaffaminsky.blogspot.com/   The reason I am moving it is to preserve it for the future when I hopefully sell Honey Ryder and the story will continue aboard a different boat, possibly with a different name. Since my next boat will not be based on the canals, then is makes sense to move from a purely canal based forum.  
honey ryder

honey ryder

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The adventures of a little blue fender

A couple of weeks ago we went away and left the boat safely cloistered in the bosom of Harefield Marina. I think of it like putting a dog in boarding kennels.   A boat savvy friend came to take her our for a weekend just before we returned from our travels and reported back saying, "it rained all the bloody time, the missus was miserable, the kiddy did nowt but watch dvds and I ended up doing all the driving and locking. Sorry about the broken glass and I heard a strange noise from the prop
honey ryder

honey ryder

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14 days

How is it possible I can have so much stuff?   I surely dont need it all. packing away the contents of the cupboards and drawers has revealed that I am infact less of a minimalist than I fooled myself into believing and more of a creative-tucker-away-of-things-out-of-sight. This will be rectified as soon as I have a moment to contemplate such ruthless skimming of "Schtuff". Most of my possessions are now tucked away in boxes, stacked 1.5 meters high by 1.5 meters square. each of these bo
honey ryder

honey ryder

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on our Wey, Cruising with Honey Ryder

It's been decided, we are heading down to the Thames again to go and visit the river Wey for a few weeks.   A quick canal plan search shows that its around 50 miles from where we are at the moment and a couple of days solid cruising, so I think we will take our time over two or three weekends.   Tonight we shall commence with putting my dinghy on the roof and talk to our neighbour who was asking if we could give her a tow down the canal a bit. Initially I was a bit worried about towing som
honey ryder

honey ryder

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bang bang, I shot you down, bang bang

It was wednesday morning, I was doing the usual getting up and going to work routine and decided to run the washing machine as I was down to my last pair of bloomers.   switch on the engine. eat some breakfast at the same time, wait for it to warm up a bit, load the washing machine, chuck the soap in the drawer, switch the travel power on, green light... then switch over the main power switch to activate the 240v system. ive done this, oh... so many times and I know the routine.   this rou
honey ryder

honey ryder

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A good slap and a long list

We moved Honey Ryder southwards this weekend and arrived South of Cowley on the grand union, amazingly for once - still talking to each other. It seems our team work was "working" this weekend.   We had come from north of Harefield where the scenery is beautiful and we were surrounded by fields, wild life and natural parkland and the contrast now we are on the junction with the slough arm is quite a slap in our faces since we arrived. Its busy and we passed so many drunken boaters in the last
honey ryder

honey ryder

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mystery solved

ive just been reading through a cruise report from Lady Muck, and I have discovered what happened to our boat a couple of weeks ago when we came back to our boat to find it had moved up the canal a few meters... apparently Lady Muck discovered a narrowboat adrift in the canal with a dinghy chained to it...with short ropes and no centreline... there's not many boats fit that description, especially i that location at that time in June...   SO the mystery is solved, somehow our boat came adri
honey ryder

honey ryder

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pain and pleasure... yin and yang

Im a firm believer in karma. Im also a believer in Newtons laws.   those of equal and opposite reactions occurring. For me this applies to everything in life. It isn't always apparent at the time but eventually it all pans out equally.   I had several moments of reflection at the weekend. The moment started in fact on Friday afternoon as I headed to a friends wedding. I don't like weddings, I don't know why, I just don't. Especially when they come slap bang in the middle of press day on a
honey ryder

honey ryder

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getting a man in....

After 6 months of a leaky Alde boiler, having wooden panels off since January to let the area dry out and only having hot water via the engine, we finally got a man in to do the job for us.   It's the first time we've paid anyone to do a job on the boat, but since it needed servicing and we don't know much about boilers and their burners, we decided getting an ex-spert to do the job might just be better than carbon monoxide poisoning.   another jobby jobbed then.   we can tick that one
honey ryder

honey ryder

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journey across Londinium

It was nearly two weeks ago we finally made our decision to scrap the idea of going down onto the river Wey, with all the threats of flooding we've had recently on the rivers we thought we would head over in the direction of the River Lee.   Friday night, we moored up at Tesco opposite the entrance to the paddington arm. Loaded up with a chuck and some vegetables for a sunday roast and early-ish on saturday we set off into waters previously un-chartered by the Honey Ryder crew.   Taking ho
honey ryder

honey ryder

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fabri-cadabra

I love sewing, I mean I really love it. There's something quite kinky about the sensation of fabric running through my fingers as it becomes joined together and takes a new form and function.   I've had some fabrics in a bag by the side of my bed for a few weeks now, they've been calling to me and begging me to put them to use. So at the weekend when the sun and rain blessed us in equal measures I got my grandmothers sewing machine out, and set to.   I also had a little visit to Dunelm w
honey ryder

honey ryder

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peeky and perky

hands up all of you who like to walk around your own home in the buff. Au Naturel?   yes, me too. My neighbour discovered this fact yesterday, as I was having my breakfast in the kitchen standing out looking over the water I saw a feint silhouette of my neighbour opposite behind their net curtains ( on a boat? net curtains? I ask you...what are they trying to hide? maybe they walk around naked too?)   I'm not exactly the shy retiring type so I figured if they want to look then they can, a
honey ryder

honey ryder

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no news is good news

Its been all quiet on the boat this month, the new black box is fitted, my wallet is £850 lighter. The new box, although it looks identical to the one it's replaced, is in fact far better than the old one. Its more efficient and works slightly differently. It's been a blessing in disguise really, although it's been an expensive blessing. The charger uses less power on start up which means we can charge directly from our small gennie via the shore power socket. We used to have to run the eng
honey ryder

honey ryder

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slow down

I got told to slow down for the first time this weekend. Yay!   I was cruising past moored boats into my own mooring spot. I say my own, I mean a place at the side of the canal I have claimed as mine for the next few days. So this chap reckoned I was going too fast. yeah, the crazy speed demon I am was approaching the bank at, oh, 3mph i think, yeah the granny on the tow path was going faster. I tried to point out I was actually slowing down to a stop, but because I was doing this in my ow
honey ryder

honey ryder

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lee ward and onward

Its been yonks since my last blog entry, shame on me. Ive been so busy enjoying myself and being on holiday I haven't had the time or mainly the inclination to go near the computer, log on and faff about.   but now Im back at work, let the faffing commence.   yes, now where was I? having had the car broken into at Tottenham Marshes we decided to shuffle up the Lee a bit and settled temporarily at Rammey marsh. The first night was wetter than an otters pocket, a saturday night huddled up in
honey ryder

honey ryder

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barge poles

I returned home last night to see my boat not quite as i left it.   my barge pole had moved and was resting in a very strange place. I wandered around the roof looking down at the scene trying to work out why someone would move my pole and leave it in such a strange place when my questions were answered by a neighbour who trotted down the towpath to talk to me.   apparently my boat had come adrift and he had to punt it back to the side with my pole.   you could say i should have hammere
honey ryder

honey ryder

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The Refrigedaire experiment

Coming back from holiday nearly two weeks ago I was faced with a decision, to turn the fridge back or not?   If I turn the fridge on, I know that I need to charge the batteries almost daily. If not, well, that was the great unknown.   So I decided to plump for the living without a fridge option. Surprisingly it hasnt been as hard as I thought it might be. The fridge is still a fairly cool place to keep stuff as part of it is below the water line so its a bit cooler down there, also the weat
honey ryder

honey ryder

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