The moorings in Newark were practically deserted apart from two small cruisers, one of which apparently had broken down but they were not moored economically and not using the mooring space wisely, however we still managed to get on the Kiln pontoon and access the electric and water facilities.
Heading on up towards Hazelford we had to moor low side whilst a work boat carried out repairs within the lock to the lower paddles, but after an hour we were soon on our way making good time through Gunthorpe and Stoke Bardolph before the lock keeper finished for the day. The moorings top side of Stoke were deserted so we stayed here for the night as it is nice and peaceful.
The following day we departed Stoke Bardolph for the short run to Nottingham and Holme Lock. We had originally intended on spending the night top side of Holme Lock, however even though there was enough mooring top side this scenic place has in our opinion been spoilt by CRT's decision to allow the permanently moored boats to stay on what was a large visitor mooring. These boats were moved there a few years ago when the hydroelectric generating station was being constructed in the old lock, as their moorings all used to be on the lock island. This decision has drastically reduced the amount of visitor moorings, and looks unappealing as they have used Heras temporary site fencing as security and have spoilt a very scenic location.
We gave the dogs a walk around the rowing lake (about 5km) before heading back down stream to our new favourite secluded location being Stoke.
On Good Friday we thought we would head back down stream to Newark hoping to beat the busy start to the Easter rush. We enjoyed another night on the Kiln pontoon, but having to improvise 'the old fashioned way' using 10 litre water containers to fill our water tank as we could not get near enough to the water point. This is another niggly fault, as the two water taps are towards the upstream end of this fairly long pontoon and could do with spacing out better.
As the Easter rush started to arrive it was quite entertaining watching a cruiser attempting to squeeze into a 30 odd foot gap on the Kiln moorings with the flow behind it but aborting his bad decision at the last second. How it escaped any impact damage was a miracle.
Easter Saturday we departed Newark bound for Cromwell and Torksey, passing Naughty Cal on her way upstream at Besthorpe. Amongst other craft heading upstream we encountered a narrowboat at Normanton Sunken Island which was well over on the wrong side. We had to slow down to allow it to get into the correct channel... there is a motorway sized sign advising which side of the river to be on, obviously he hadn't seen it or chose to ignore it, and didn't seem happy with us when we passed him as we refused to go into the shallow water.
We spent a very blustery rest of the afternoon and evening on the pontoon bottom side of Torksey lock, and upon starting our boat heater in the evening this decided to play up. We think this just requires a replacement glow plug but will investigate this further, therefore the warm blankets were out once again out on the boat. Apart from that we had a quiet stay on the pontoon, and we had a very early start to look forward to the following morning when we could once again stretch Moonshine's legs for her passage down to Hull.
We caught a very early morning tide heading downstream towards Keadby, choosing to travel down on the ebb at displacement speed, meeting the flood near Keadby. Once there was enough depth we opened Moonshine up and planed down to Hull passing numerous craft heading back from their Easter break, including another Seawings 355 'Odin' from Farndon.
We did notice that Moonshine's prop wash and speed was not as it should be, this was rather concerning as our initial thoughts were that we had lost an exhaust bellow. Since we were spending two nights in Hull we had plenty of time to investigate the problem. From the dingy Peter had a good prod around underwater as best as he could and everything seemed fine. Our thoughts are that we had caught a stick or some form of debris across the outdrive and had been dragging this all the way from the Trent to Hull. We had no problems on our run back from Hull to Goole running at 25 knots through the water in less than an hour, including reducing down to displacement speed at Upper Whitton for 5 minutes to pass the 'UKD Seahorse' which was repositioning the 32B lightfloat so as not to cause any problems from our wash. We had excellent service penning in at Ocean Lock and once safely back at our berth we were on our way back home for lunch time.
A successful week away and a good test for the newly refurbished outdrives. We just have the boat heater to sort now.
Bad luck with the heater. Ours was certainly on a lot over the four day break!
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