A testing day
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Today was the day for me to take my ICC and CEVNI tests at the local training school at Bisham Abbey.
A nice early start to the day saw us out on the river in quite misty conditions. It was very, very quiet actually with no other boats around. Probably just as well really because our depth of vision was extremely short.
We negotiated the first lock and then headed on into the mist.
At this point I decided that maybe it would be a good idea to put on the navigation lights, and eventually managed to work out which switch it was – probably a bit wasted as there was nothing else around, but it appeared not to have gone unnoticed when we arrived at the training school for my tests, so maybe a small brownie point.
As planned, we arrived at Bisham at exactly 8:30 – unfortunately it turned out we were not due till 9:30!
Still, it meant that we could walk the dogs round the grounds before heading back to the boat for some testing.
I spent the day with Peter our instructor at Bishop Abbey School, and we began with the CEVNI test – a bit more challenging than I expected but still I managed a pass. Peter was kind enough to let Nicki take the test (unofficially for now), but unfortunately she did not pass but then, she hadn’t revised so she hadn’t expected to.
Next came the barge handling exercises. For this I had to rely heavily on Nicki to help me with some of the tasks and to hopefully make them look as effortless as possible. Again it all turned out well and I was certified.
I spent a long time with Peter going through the tidal waterway challenges that await us when we make our push to the continent, which was all very useful and I think we definitely need to take it slow and enjoy it.
Almost back to the marina, and nicely through Temple lock.
