Free to a good home, now on the move.

[Yamanx]

The beginning…..

 

Free to a good home, The Enway Endeavour’s journey south from the Calder and Hebble Navigation to a place on the Shropshire Union Canal.

 

Arrived at Ledgard Boat Company to collect the boat much later on Friday than anticipated, the traffic on the journey up there was dreadfull and took us four and half hours. This for a journey of only two and a bit hours usually. Dropped one car off at Marsden in the hope we would make that distance over the weekend. But my mate who was helping me had to be home early on the Sunday restricting our travelling time to Friday pm and all day Saturday, with some of Sunday am if required.

 

And we could have made it but on the way we spoke to another boater coming down who appeared to know the area quite well, he advised we didn’t go any further than Slaithwaite as there is little chance to moor up nearer to the Standedge Tunnel end.

 

We didn’t move the boat until Saturday morning at about 7.30am. Started ok and all seemed well, managed to get the interior lights working and the gas appliances (Apart from the fridge, which didn’t want to light up).

 

Well after about two hours we got lost, at least we didn’t know where to go. Yep, a right couple of prats getting lost on a canal system. We didn’t have a map, I’d left it at home. But I had took a good look at it and I thought I should be able to manage alright without it. After all how difficult can it be? We travelled up the Calder and Hebble Navigation through the Kirklees section, we then came across a junction and we didn’t know which way to go. Well we followed our instincts and walked to a garage to by a AtoZ road map that showed the canals. Plonkers.

 

It was a hards days graft getting up as far as Slaithwaite for Saturday evening. We arrived at about 7.30pm in the near darkness. Some of the journey through the Huddersfield Narrow was slow because we kept getting stuck on the bottom as the water level was too low, at one point my mate went in trying to push us off the side, gave me a right laugh. We had to go up several locks ahead and let water down to get afloat and these locks are half a mile apart at times. The boat had a kind of weed growing all over the bottom, sort of like long grass growing off the side of the boat below water line. Not any more it hasn’t.

 

The boat performed fine, lost our charging system to some failure I haven’t discovered yet, probably the alternator has broke and there is water leaking in from somewhere, slowly and it appears this has always been the case as the floor in that area is rotten and there is a small bilge pump rigged up to a float switch that pumps the water back into the engine bilge.

 

The hydraulic drive appeared at first to have issues but I now think that its part of the make up of that type of drive, we’ll see.

 

Next is to get it through Standedge Tunnel. This is going to be a real problem for me with time off work. But I will try and enlist some help on that front.

[Derek]

Yo' da' man!

 

It should be called the "back to the future" cruise!

 

Derek

[bottle]

Way to go, and to think you got it for free, it can only get better. Anyway if it all went smoothly think how boring your post would have been

[Liam]

Yamanx,

 

Will you be getting to the Shroppie via the Bridgewater?

 

If so, and you need a lift, let me know. It's 'my' part of town