Cut adrift

At 00.15 last night we were woken by a fellow boater knocking on the boat to tell us our ropes had been cut and our back end was across the cut! We hadn't gone to bed until 11.30 so it must have happened as soon as we'd fallen asleep.

We’ve been untied before, but never had the ropes cut.  It wasn’t just us either, 4 other boats had been done.  As it was malicious damage (with an exceptionally sharp knife), we phoned the police who arrived within half an hour.  They took a statement from us and the boat moored directly in front of us, but the other 3 boats didn’t report it. This morning we reported it to the BW information centre as well.

In daylight we assessed the damage - 3 ropes cut into at least 3 pieces each, total replacement cost about £60   ouch….. But it could have been a lot worse, at least there was no actual damage to the boats.

We've moved closer to the National Indoor Arena where there are several CCTV cameras and there are now several other boats moored with us so hopefully it’ll be safety in numbers tonight. We’ve also got the chains on.

When we were still building boats it was one of my jobs to splice the ropes that we supplied with the boats.  I’ve never done short in-line splicing before though, so I downloaded instructions here and started mending the ropes. Thank heavens for the internet.

before

this is a fid, a really useful tool for splicing ropes

after

They might look a bit “patched” but they’re strong enough to do the job and we’ll pick up a new set on our travels, just to keep as spares and for best.

It took me most of the afternoon to splice the ropes as there were 3 cuts in each one so at 6pm we headed out for a beer and to listen to a blues band who were playing in Brindley Square.  They were very good but only on for 2 hours, I could have listened to them all night.

These Canada Geese goslings were only hatched the day before yesterday and have been the target for a pair of large gulls who've been dive-bombing them all day.  There were 7, now there are only 5.