As we’re discovering, the summer months are insanely busy times for boaters. Half of you spend your summers cruising around the canals of Britain, enjoying beautiful moorings under plush trees and no doubt many a stop at a canal side pub. The other half utilise the sun and lack of rain to do all kinds of maintenance on your boats, grinding rust, touching up paint work or even ripping out engines and cleaning bilges.
Unfortunately for us, July was very much the latter! Having only been aboard for just over six months there was still plenty to do aboard in order to get the boat to how we’d like it to be. Most of this was was in the interior as it was simply something we were more familiar with, having converted our own campervan a few years ago; the exterior of our boat will have to wait a bit.
This month was the month we decided we had to get rid of the horrible pink curtains that were so at odds with the lovely turquoise colour we’d painted the interior of the boat. We’d been kindly given the curtains from another boater when we had first arrived at our marina, I think because they were getting sick of seeing a bit too much of us as we’d removed the old curtains and had not had chance to replace them; and so we’d been living with overly large pink tartan curtains which frankly looked horrible.
Therefore we decided this month was the time to resolve this issue! Enter our trust sewing machine and some matching fabric we had managed to find and within one day we’d cut sewn and hung a whole new set of curtains and even had some matching cushion covers to boot thanks to a little excess fabric. We think it’s made a huge difference to the look of the boat and wish we’d done it sooner!
It wasn’t all work this month however, we still managed to find the time to don the captain’s hat and hit the cut for a few day trips around the local area. We’re getting far more confident cruising now and are thoroughly enjoying the community around narrowboats, the chatting as you pass, the generosity when going up and down locks and the knowing nods at the canal side pubs when you notice a cork ball on someone else’s keys too. It’s very much making us want to get out for a longer period of time and really experience life on the cut.
