So what is a Red Board?
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So here we are on 1st April 2018. This is the day we had planned to leave our beautiful marina and start the journey down the River Thames, pick up our pilot for the English Channel crossing and head over into Belgium, but all it has done for the last few days is rain – really not what we are used to in the UK – and we are unable to leave. So we are stuck here for a bit longer, although if you have to be stranded somewhere, this is the best place to be.
Now the river conditions look like this.
We could cope with one stretch on Red Boards, but what this means is that ALL the sluices are open on ALL stretches so that the water can be allowed to flow as fast as it can.
There is a flow rate of 170m3/sec, where normally it would be a mere 50m3/sec. So, very, very fast.
The official wording for these conditions is:
“We advise users of all boats not to navigate because the strong flows make it difficult and dangerous.”
The towpath into Marlow
So here we stay. The problem is that as it will take a while for the conditions to improve, we are now ‘marooned’ here until at least the end of the week and we have had to advise the crew not to join us until the situation improves.
Time will not be wasted however as there are a few things that we can sort out whilst we wait. The new solar panels are installed and working but I need to tidy the cables up when it is dry enough and there is also a new TV to install in the aft cabin as the existing one developed a terminal fault just a few days ago – and as everyone who knows me knows, I can’t cope without a bit of TV. Very sad. I have realised that there is a bit of a design issue there with the radiator mounted under the TV which is what I think caused the failure. I will have to arrange to deflect the heat or just get cold – personally I would vote for being cold and having a working TV, but the first mate has the polar opposite view.
Alec is back from his travels of South America and we had a good catchup yesterday (Saturday) before all the children headed off with the dogs to Southampton for the Easter weekend, presumably to do stupid things and drink too much.
