Yesterday we took on our
first lock. Well, anyone would think I
had never been on a boat before. It
seems I have forgotten everything I ever learnt in 20 years of sailing during
the 20 years we have lived in the Azores! For a start, our little Njord is too short for
the spacing of the bollards in the lock.
Do you think I could throw the darn rope around the bollard? Not a chance!
So Ian and I swapped places, he having already got his rope around the
bollard near the stern. But I then had
to manoeuvre the boat to get the bow as close to the next bollard as possible
and in the process let go of the tail of the rope around the stern bollard and
it drifted over the side! Ian got the
forward rope on, and I had to pull the whole stern rope back aboard and start
all over again with the stern bollard.
Finally got that sorted. As the
lock filled and the water rose we had to move the ropes to higher bollards,
which again was a nightmare for me at only 1.5m tall. By the time the rope slipped off the lower
bollard I still could not reach the higher bollard! But we got there in the end.
We have a fancy piece of
equipment on board for putting ropes around bollards but could not find it in the
cavernous locker where we had stowed it!
We found it once we safely tied up at the mooring, all the way at the
bottom of the locker! It is obviously
going to be an essential item for me and from now on it will be ready on deck.
I am just pleased we were the
only the boat in the lock so I didn't have an audience to my incompetence - but
Ian assured me the lock operators were watching on cctv and having a good
laugh!
Today is a rest day, closed
in between two movable bridges only 1.00m high which are not operating
today. However, we needed a rest day and
it is raining even harder today than it did yesterday. It is a lot warmer though.
Chicken stew for dinner last
night, and the leftovers became soup for lunch today. More chicken for dinner (bought a big economy
pack yesterday) but in the form of Thai green curry.
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