And we are off !

My Mum, Yvonne & I arrived in Goole at about 3pm on Sunday, and spent the afternoon getting settled in. We decorated one side of Sirius with some Christmas lights, and will do the other side when we can reach it safely :)

In the evening we went to the local marina club house and had a quick drink before all going to bed.

On Monday we spent the morning fueling up, buying coal for the stoves etc, and then at about 12:30 the gravel barge Galdys Lillian can along side us, we tide onto the side of them, and then started our journey :)


They towed us at about 10 knots, probably the fastest Sirius has ever gone :)

The plan had been to get to Torksey Lock, but unfortunately they had a message from the quary to say that the conveyorbelt had broken, and so they decided to take as as far as Kidby, we reached there at about 16:10, so it was already getting dark.

We then carried on under our own steam, albeit too fast for the engine, and we overheated, and the engine cut out in the middle of the river, with the tide flowing out we quickly started to drift backwards out of control!! Panic stations!! Anchor! After a few tense minutes the Anchor had turned us facing up stream and dragged us onto the river bank.

We waited 15 minutes and then restarted the engine, after a few minutes we managed to pull the back end away from the bank, and pull the front end off, we were away again, but this time, a little slower!

We then kept going until the first morning we could find, which turned out to be many hours later in Gainsborough, infact it was 23:30 when we arrived, so by then we had got very used to navigating in the dark with the moon light!

We are now going to wait until about midday before setting off again, the tide should turn at about 3pm, and then for 2 hours we will be going with the tide, so we should go a lot further today, fingers crossed!