We have our own flood to contend with

Hi All,
Hope you all had a lovely Christmas and not been blown about too much in the storms.  Hopefully they will leave us alone soon.  We had planed to take Joanne for a trip to Braunston but that had to be curtailed.

That said, we are still having a wonderful time on AmyJo but confess we have done absolutely nothing until last night.  Most unusual for us as we're always on the go.  Must admit though both Chris and I are getting too used to this chillaxing lifestyle. 

On Christmas day we got up at the late time of 9.45am and sat down to a cup of tea enjoying a breathless, clear and crisp morning in the marina.  A slight fog over the countryside looked stunning

The weather forecasters were banging on about a storm coming but as the morning fog lifted the day turned out glorious, all be it chilly, and not a breath of wind.  Was this the lull before the storm?

As lunch time beckoned Chris and Joanne set too getting diner ready.

While they got on with that I topped up the water tank. 

That's when things started to go wrong.  

I had just left the water tap and turned my back for one minute when there came a shout from a rather soaked Chris.  The hose had shot out of the water filler and was showering everywhere in the cratch. 

We sorted all that out and when the tank filled up things went from bad to worse.  Instead of flowing out of the overflow pipe the water overflowed the filler as well, ran down the cratch locker and poured onto the mains hook-up point.  Needless to say the electrics tripped immediately.  After disconnecting from the mains I had to strip down the socket on the boat and dry it out.  When we reconnected I discovered we had tripped the circuit at the marina board.  Fortunately this was accessible and I managed to reset the power without further problem.  After the embarrassment of this we learned a valuable lesson.  We are going to have to take care filling the water tank and I will need to move the hook up point to the other side of the boat.  Embarrassed you say?  Yes I sure was and very lucky!

 After all that excitement we managed to settle down and opened our pressies

After tidying away the mess and as we had not been out of the boat much Chris and I decided to stretch our legs a little and went for a walk down to Crick tunnel and back as the weather had settled.   Braunston was still tempting us but we knew that promised storm was not far away though looking at these photos you would not have thought so.

We could hear an engine in the tunnel as we approached the portal so we waited the 15mins it takes to traverse but there as no sign of a boat, we can only assume it was going away from us so we walked back in the sunshine with Chris enjoying her Christmas present in the form of a new coat she wanted.

Both Chris and I are fans of George Clark's Amazing Spaces program so were surprised to find this little space, that we think featured in one of his episodes, on our way back to the marina.  It certainly looks like the one that was restored using original tools of the time.  Its the right shape and colour at least

We next decided to have a wander round the marina to have a look at the other boats.  We need to get some sort of matting for the stern deck and wanted to see what others had done. Seems flexi-deck is a firm favourite so we'll look into getting some for our next visit to AmyJo.

We took the opportunity to take a few photos of AmyJo from a different perspective to the one we are used to 

Whilst the day was lovely and clear the night was a different matter.  The promised storm marched in over Crick with a vengeance.  We had just got back to AmyJo about 10pm from having a drink in the Wheat Sheaf pub when the heavens opened and the wind got up considerably.  AmyJo got jostled in the gusts all night and if she had sails we would have been perfectly at home riding the gusts.  In the storm the other day we lost our Chinaman's hat in the night so we had to buy a new one.  Lesson learned this one was screwed to the chimney.  As a precaution I also tied the chimney to AmyJo in case the wind swept it away.  I was glad to find all was still in place in the morning.

Today has been breezy but much more settled and the wind is slowly easing  I spent a while cleaning the outside of AmyJo and after tea Joanne headed home to Chester.

Tomorrow we're heading to Essex to visit the parents for the day to spend some time with the parents.  We're of to lunch with Chris's mum Mary then off to my parents before returning to AmyJo.