2019 in a nutshell

Boxing day to 8th January 2019 was spent rushing my boat down south for Small Boy to live on it AGAIN while he finished his Drama Degree.

February, March and the beginning of April spending time with family in New Zealand including a fabulous packhorse ride on the South Island which involved taking the horses from a completely isolated station across Lake Wanaka on their enormous flat bed barge.

To give you an idea of scale the builders working at the station

 had come over on the barge with 5 concrete mixers, a bulldozer and a couple of vans.

Hauling the very heavy mooring rope

April May looking for and buying a boat for said Small Boy as he is now a convert to boat life.

June fixing his boat and getting it ready for him in the form of proper two pack blacking, making the engine bay more accessible etc.  I also did some work.

July I solo boated his boat down to London for him.  And painted one of his galley windows to give additional privacy in case you nipped to the loo and forgot to close the door between the bathroom and the galley.  I know no one could actually see through the gap between the blind and the side of the boat but looking out from your seated position you could see them soooo clearly it was quite offputting!  He requested a view of Mount Sunday from his trip to New Zealand.

End of July and the beginning of August we swopped possessions back and forth and he broke the rudder of my boat (after I had broken down because the engine dropped all it's coolant into the bilges) by dragging me backwards to a suitable location for RCR to find me and we hit an underwater obstacle.

 

Luckily Uxbridge Boats Centre did a rear lift and sorted out the 8 inches of bent tiller in an afternoon.

Rest of August I solo boated up the Thames (apart from the Tidal bit when I made him accompany me)  The first week on the Thames I was suffering from vertigo.  Not ideal when you are on your own.

September Himself joined me for the trip up the Oxford Canal including a brief sojourn in Banbury awaiting a new alternator.  Then up the Hatton Flight on the Grand Union and to the top of Lapworth Flight. Where I was abandoned by Himself.   I then continued solo down the Tardebigge. Pleased to say this took me a total of 6 hours,  That clearly wasn't enough so I spent the next day helping Chamberlain Carrying Co (fuel boat with butty) down at least 20 of the locks.  I waited for Himself to rejoin me for the trip via the Droitwich canals and up the Severn.  However, whilst waiting the rains fell in that there Wales so after getting stuck in Droitwich for four days as we also couldn't return the way we had come either, we finally gave up waiting for the river to drop, returned under the M5 and went back UP the Tardebigge.  This time in 3.5 hours.

I reached my destination by the middle of October.

Now I did do eco bricking whilst on both boats and Himself very sweetly saved all his non recyclable plastic for the 3 and a half months I was away.  Sigh.  I have just this minute finished packing it all into bottles.

So pretty much a year has passed since I started ecobricking and here is the result.

The top row were validated etc before I left in July.  The second row are what I bricked since July and the third row is a just started bottle.  It looks full but that is because the plastic likes to fight back in the early stages of stuffing.  I have added up the weight of each bottle and the two of us have saved a total of just over 7kgs of plastic from going to Landfill.  Very pleased with that.