Yesterday's fallow canal section was a 10-minute walk. Half already has the water restored. The weir (in the previous post) is in good shape because volunteers worked on it. The dry canal bed still looks bad. See the photo ALT text.
What's involved to undo a 1950s decision to stop maintaining a canal, sell off adjacent land, fill it in, and build roads on it? You can read about the challenges on the work-crew blog:
https://lhcrt.org.uk/category/blogs/
1700s canal engineers tried various weir designs. This one's circular. Excess water flowed down the channel and over the perfectly horizontal ring of bricks, to drain away.
Sadly, this is part of an orphaned section of canal that is now fallow.
Happily, there's a group of Lichfield volunteers rebuilding this canal and its locks, to reconnect it to the Birmingham Canal Network. It'll take years because two roads were built across the land.
Today was a great day for indulging in a bit of gongoozling at the Applecross Basin on Forth and Clyde Canal in Glasgow. If you don't know already, gongoozling is the act of watching the activity on a canal, but without getting involved. It's thought to have originated from the Lincolnshire words Gawn and Gooze, both of which mean to stare, and one who gongoozles is a gongoozler.
When it's underway, the boat goes 3 miles per hour – slower when there are locks to pass through. But a moving boat is a free boat. Even at 3 miles per hour.
Over the next 50 days I'll be watching the Canal & River Trust's progress updates about their winter maintenance projects, also known as winter stoppages. That'll give me a sense of which direction to point the boat in April.
Which way is freedom? 
Both.
The #marina provides an electric meter where I plug in my boat's #shoreline, to keep the #batteries charged in the absence of solar power. Batteries charge my phone and run the dehumidifier.
I mostly light with a #candle.
For #heat, it's diesel-fulled central heating, and mostly a solid-fuel burner that burns coal briquettes and logs.
I run the #boat #engine monthly, to drive out any condensation.
Details of much of this are in my posts of the past few months.
The nights are still chilly, the days are a tad warmer.
There are hints of spring. Some birds are back. One of them splattered the stern deck.
This week, it's sunny-ish and warm enough for an outdoor scrubbing of the stern deck.
The days are also getting a tad longer, so the solar panels can incrementally add to the onboard electrics.
In about 50 days I'll be preparing for the season's boating.
Getting up at 02:30 to put more wood and coal briquettes on the dying fire is something people with central heating, gas, and electricity don't have to think about.
I thought about it because, though I was still comfortable under the blankets, my exposed face was feeling a chill creeping through the boat. The thermometer inside said 14°C (57°F). The ice outside suggests more cooling to come.
Along the dock, the marina has a number of prepay-type electric meters for shorelines. I keep a healthy balance on mine so the boat always has electricity.
To top up my balance, the meter accepts prepaid cards made of paper with a brown magnetic strip in the centre. I lift up the plastic cover (held on by duct tape) to insert the card in a slot. There's a digital display that shows my current balance.
I buy prepaid cards from the marina office.
The canal's iced over. Almost got frostbite, walking back. The embers of this morning's fire kept the boat at +4°C (39°F) inside.
I waxed a log with candle stubs to help it ignite, then re-lit the stove. In 90 minutes I'll take off my coat and mittens.
I put my sleeping gear—2 layers, bottoms and tops with hoods—near the stove, so I won't have to change into iced garments for bed, later.
While I was away, the wind ground my (electric) shoreline between the dock and the hardened bank, fraying the wires and shorting out the entire dock.
My neighbours unplugged my boat, leaving it without minimal heating while the weather went below zero. 
Tomorrow I'll detach the plug, cut off 2 meters of cord to remove the frayed wires, and then reattach the plug. Three minutes, easy fix.
Thanks for nothing, neighbours.
It's freezing -3°C tonight and will freeze -2°C to -4°C every night for at least a week.
I won't get back to the boat for another 36 hours to light the wood stove, so I hope the electric heater, which I left on low, does its job. If not, this weather might be hard on the plumbing. It'll certainly be hard on me once I am back. 
It's windy tonight and the boat is getting thrown around a bit, but it's not causing me any worry.
The storm last week caused surprising damage to the dock where I'm moored.
Both sides of the dock have pontoons along its entire length. Each pontoon accommodates two boats.
In the photo, note the large gap. The white bar shows where an entire steel-framed pontoon used to be. It broke off during the storm. The force of the wind against its boats pushed, bent and snapped the pontoon off the dock.
Canal & River Trust will put this barge in the water, today.
I'm always surprised at how many workers it takes to do CRT work.
In November I saw eight workers at a lock, 1 using a measuring tape to check the dimensions of a gate, and 7 chatting.
Today, it's 1 to operate the crane, 2 to hold ropes to the barge, 2 to run tugs, 5 to stand and chat.
And they've been here for hours with the barge, waiting for the crane.
Sunshine makes the frost sparkle on the dock. It is warmer inside the boat than out. 7°C inside, frost outside, despite the mid-morning sun.
The marina toilet block has a wall-mounted space heater that works hard on days like today. 
In 45 minutes the sun should clear the huge evergreen tree that's perfectly shading my solar panels.
I'll have sausages for breakfast, as soon as I fry them.
It took me a while to realise there was no 230v electricity on board. I was using things that run on the 12v network.
I don't know whether to call it a breaker or a fuse, but it tripped. Internet helperfolk looked at the photo and declared it to be a Residual Current Circuit Breaker, or RCCB.
I've got it all running again, but I also set a recurring timer to remind me to check the breakers and inverter every 20 minutes.
My new #Meaco DD8L Junior dehumidifier is 
. It took 5 litres of water from the air.
This breaks the cycle: wipe condensation off the boat windows, dry the rag (adds humidity to the air), which then condenses on the windows.
This appliance generates a tiny bit of heat—good in winter when I'll be running it to combat damp.
The electric meter says it used £1.25 in 24 hours. That's less than I spend on briquettes, logs and kindling.
1) Roedd lle ar y cei AngloWelsh pan ro'n ni eisiau prynu glo y bore 'ma.
2) Gwnaethon ni symud ein cwch ni i mewn ei angorfa yn y marina heb bwrw yn erbyn cwch arall.
3) Does dim glaw eto!
1) There was space on the AngloWelsh wharf when we wanted to buy coal this morning.
2) We moved our boat into its berth in the marina without bumping against another boat.
3) There's no rain yet!
When the freezing weather comes, two electric space heaters, set on low, will keep the plumbing from freezing when the wood fire burns out.
I dug these heaters out of the bow hatch, then unboxed them and reassembled their feet.
Britain's canals and waterways support a fairly unique community. Tonight we take time to explore its qualities and some of the challenges it faces.
#podcast #canallife #community
'The Long Village (Villages and tribes)'
https://www.noswpod.com/village/
