A boat drought?!

The Big Blue Boat is experiencing a drought. Which is odd, since the rest of the river is experiencing a flood.

I’ll give you some background first…

We spent a lovely Christmas moored in St Neots and on Boxing Day we headed to a friend’s mooring a little bit outside St Neots. We awoke the next morning to the sound of someone knocking on the boat. It was a neighbour, who was stood outside in the pouring (and almost freezing) rain trying to tell us that the water level had risen so much that the boat was caught on the ropes and starting to list!

When I lived in a house a flood meant that the park flooded and the brook near the house was fuller and flowed faster. And boats are good in a flood because they float. But it is a bit more complicated than that. On this river the Environment agency issue river level warnings. They are: no warning (good to go, no problems), caution (river levels are higher than usual and/or faster than usual- proceed with caution) and strong stream advice (river is high and fast- do not navigate). We get a call, text and email when a warning is issued. Apart from that day. Our first experience of a flood and we didn’t get a caution advice. We received a strong stream advice warning for a different river; when our river was like white water rapids and over a foot higher than normal! By the time we got the strong stream advice for our river, we were already working on protecting the boat from the sudden deluge!

Most boaters join their boat to land using a knot called a clove hitch. This is great because it tightens as the boat pulls on it, making it very secure. But there are two times (that I know of so far…)when a clove hitch is not a good knot. 1-in a lock, as the water level drops the knot tightens and the boat ends up dangling sideways by the rope and 2- when tied to a flood pole. A flood pole is a tall pole which goes into the river bed and runs vertically upwards, above the boat. If the river rises the boat floats up, guided by the poles and can’t end up deposited on the river bank or pinned under the water. If you tie to these poles with a clove hitch knot, when the river level rises, the boat pulls the knot tight and the rope can’t slide up the pole.

So, to recap, we went from normal river to full flood in a record time with no warning and we had not tied appropriately for a flood. And it was Christmas time.

Mr BBB and our neighbours resecured the boat (with clove hitch knots as we didn’t know any better ones), checked the other boats and made sure everything was okay. I provided tea.

Once we were quite confident that the boat was safe for now, we went out to meet some friends for lunch. The land near the moorings was flooded, and it was now snowing, so with a detour to buy wellies, off we went for our lunch date. By the time we got back, the river had risen even more and all of the standing water was frozen. We had quite a lot of fun smashing the ice until we started to slide on the thicker ice! When we got back to the boat, the river level was even higher, so the ropes needed adjusting again. And again…and again!

The river was flowing faster than I have ever noticed before, and it was bringing all kinds of debris along with it. Looking out of the window reminded me of the old Generation Game conveyor belt, log, tree, plastic tub, bottles, more trees…cuddly toy! A lot of this debris seemed to make a beeline for the boat. With a very loud SCCRAAAPPEEE, CLONNKKK, GGGRINNNDDDD as it ran along the side of the boat. The boat is made of thick steel, but it was still quite alarming!

I expected the flood to last a couple of days (oh, so naive!). The Strong Stream Advice lasted for about 3 weeks. That meant that we couldn’t travel for 3 weeks. Which meant we couldn’t get to a water point for 3 weeks. We usually fill up the water tank every week – 10 days. This was a lot longer!

To start off with we didn’t change our behaviour very much. We didn’t use the washing machine, but carried on as normal. Then we made sure that we only washed up when it was essential and with as little water as possible (I like that way of saving water). Then we stopped showering and washed instead! We looked at kits to purify river water, and water containers and decided that we could fill up a water container (a big 51-litre container that rolls along the floor) and fill it up by car/foot. Not many places sell these in the middle of winter! One shop had one left, so we bought it. Now we know why it was the last one! The handle was broken and needed a screw to fix it and the waterhole leaked! We managed though. We filled it up and wrestled it to the car. Then it had to be manoeuvred through a muddy field… and then onto the boat without filling the boat with mud or getting mud into the drinking water.

Mr BBB managed this and syphoned the water into the water tank and the gauge hardly moved!  We decided that we would need to do this regularly if we wanted to fill up the water tanks. We arranged to do some washing in a friends machine and prepared ourselves for a lot of hauling water.

Then the next day the warning was downgraded to caution! We could navigate to the water point and fill the tanks up! We celebrated by showering and putting on the washing machine!

We are all learning some new knots now, and we know how little water we actually need to survive! As Mr BBB put it, We were quite green before, but now we’re positively Hulk!