Engine porn! That lovely chugging sound ;o)

It was nice to be able to take a few of our guests out for a short chug downstream. Love the chuckles and giggles from Steve & Lisa as they wave back to our fellow moorers who are waving us off.

Our 'Nearly getting old' party

As Glenda was 50 years old in January and I'll be 65 years old in December, we decided to have a party at our marina, somewhere in the middle of the year. Weather wise, we couldn't have picked a better weekend.
We bought a mountain of locally made sausages, burgers and stuff for breakfast. We borrowed a marquee and a gazebo from Jaymee at the Cock Inn in Denford.
All we needed now was people to enjoy it!

Jaymee from the Denford Cock kindly loaned this marquee, on Friday evening we chilled with my kids who'd arrived from Wales and a few early arrivals.

My youngest son Jac, his girlfriend Lizzie came up from Wales, Danny was an early arrival from Suffolk.

72 pints of locally brewed Mad Monk and a pale ale that Graham brought from the Wirral.

Our neighbour Martin brought his 1913 Buick ragtop out to give rides to our guests.

Martin was kept busy all day!

Dave, our 'next door' neighbour and Denford friends Tim & Christine.

A great experience for my kids and their friends.

We were so lucky with the weather.

My hastily 'erected' Choppurinal came in handy with the amount of drinks quaffed!

Danny from Suffolk on barbeque breakfast duty the next morning.

From left to right :- My eldest son Sion, Glenda's daughter Becca, My son Jac's girlfriend Lizzie, my daughter Nia, my son Jac and Glenda's son Nick.

Nice to see that Glenda's friend Carol came up with Rob & Julie from Suffolk.

The mad hatters!

Nice Moggie convertible

Great to get to party with a few of my Welsh biker mates Phill, Steve and Lisa.

Let the party begin!

Lit a few pit fires at dusk.

Nice sunset over the marina.

View from Freyja as we chug out onto the river.

Enjoying the pit fire and the company.

A chilled evening around the pit fires.

A great time with lovely people.

A successful trip at last.

We finally got out onto the river, with no problems!

It was a tad windy, but you'd never believe it from this photo.

Lush and green in the valley of the Nene!

Nice to escape the marina, Glenda had a short walk to work in Tiggywinkles Tearoom, Woodford.

Sunset at the Denford moorings.

The Sabb's first test run didn't go too well.

I finally managed to stem the many small leaks in our skintanks and, after resoldering all of my copper pipes and then pressure testing them, we decided to take a shortish test trip out on the Nene.

So, we headed downstream, but the temperature gauge shot up to over one hundred degrees and Glenda said that the inverter wasn't working. so it was that we only got as far as Ringstead Lower Lock.

There, I found I'd mixed the battery connections and quickly fixed that. I topped up the coolant and, after consulting Paul Johnson of PJ Marine (who also has a Sabb 2J and who convinced me to get ours) I blocked the calorifier feed so that water would be forced around the engine.

Then, it happened! The Sabb was chuffing away...Duff, Duff, Duff, Clank, Clank, Clank! EEEKKK! What the hell? Am I now going to have to rebuild my engine? At this point I was very low, months of slogging and expense to only get one lock downstream!

Right! We'll get someone to tow us back. So, I decided to slowly wind her downstream so we'd be pointing in the right direction.

But after winding, and just before we reached the lock landing, there was a PING! and she went back to her comforting Duff, Duff!

We decided to take her through the lock and then as she seemed happy, back to the marina.