We bought Enid from the Fish and Duck Marina (also called Pope's
Corner I believe) where the river Cam meets the Great Ouse. Right in the middle
of the flattest, windiest, bleakest part of England, the Fens. The few
weeks that we spent there impressed upon me the true vastness of the earth and
sky, showed me some mind-blowing sunsets and gave me more than one wind-blown
ear ache. It also demonstrated that with minimal electricity/cooking implements
and reading material you will become so mind-numbingly bored that walking 3
miles in a gale to the nearest charity shop and buying Robot Wars the board
game becomes THE MOST EXCITING THING EVER. It is a good game, like chess but
not as hard and with more opportunity to shout ‘ACTIVATE!’
At the Fish and Duck. This was before we renamed her and she was still called 'Slow Progress'
The people who lived at Fish and Duck were
very friendly and helpful, as river dwellers usually are, and gave some very
good tips. I think they could see we needed all the help we could get as
scruffy, excitable, wild-eyed twenty year-olds. We went into living-aboard with
essentially no prior boat knowledge, and there was a lot to learn very quickly.
The main challenge we had before us was
moving the boat from Cambridgeshire to Brighton. Transporting a boat 150 odd
miles is no mean feat. After some logistical calculations with a map of the
inland waterways we realised that we would need to move the boat mostly by
road. But before we could do that we needed to drive the boat to somewhere it
could be lifted by crane out of the water. Luckily for us the nearest place was
20 miles downstream, and we were pretty excited about cruising there!
The other
issue was neither of us had really driven a boat before. Just before we set off
on the maiden voyage there was a strange buzzing coming from the region of the
engine which made us panic, obviously fairly noisily because the nice man in
the boat next to us popped his head out for long enough to tell us the water
pump was humming because our water tank was empty (absolutely nothing to do
with the engine it turns out, and definitely nothing to panic about). He
chuckled and pointed us to the hose. We had invited a few good friends over to
see the boat and also help us by standing on deck and pre-empting any boat
crashes. River boats don’t move very fast and collisions can be avoided with
the use of a long pole and a gentle push in the other direction. But the marina
we had to navigate out of had a few very sharp turns and was filled with very
lovely and probably very expensive house boats.
Alex decided to
tackle this issue by grabbing the bull by the horns and setting off with no
prior warning to anyone else (we were still eating breakfast).
‘Aaaah I’m driving the boat!’ he screamed ‘Everyone come and help
me… Get on deck!’
Our good friend Henry was pulling his socks on urgently, cup of
tea still in hand
‘No time for shoes Henry!!’ Alex shouted
The element of surprise paid off, and we steered out of a marina
for the first time with no incidents. This was followed by much whooping and
beer opening, the boat slowly veering towards the riverbank before we
remembered to stop celebrating and start steering again.
Success!
Our first port of
call was Ely, it wasn't really on route but we really liked the idea of mooring
the boat up outside a lovely pub and having a bit of a jaunt around before, the
cruising got serious, or as serious as it can be!
We met more friends
in Ely, went to the pub, cruised up and down the river singing songs and
generally having a lovely time. I saw the rest of my life stretching out in
front of me, full of Wind in the Willows-esque picnics and afternoon G&T’s,
it was joyous. I’d like to say I wasn't mistaken, but I was little bit, the
boat hasn't been all plain sailing as they say. I do still make time for
afternoon G&T’s though. The next day we
were woken by twenty-odd Canada geese staring through our window. It was time
to drive the boat across Cambridgeshire.
