Time for Cake

Welcome back, are you enjoying the sun?  It's beautiful weather here in Chester although it's rather dismal in the dock. You watch, when we get out on Friday the weather will change and it'll persist down!

We're now just killing time until we leave the dock on Friday morning so when I got back from Tesco yesterday I made a cake.  It's the cherry and almond one that I made for David's birthday.  I've never yet met a man who doesn't like this cake and Roger's no exception.  From the day that I made David's he's been asking me to make him one too.

It's an old recipe that I've been making for years. In fact it's so old that I can't remember where the original recipe came from and over the years mine has probably changed a bit. I'll share the current recipe with you now, if you'd like.

Cherry & Almond Cake
8oz butter or marg. (I used Clover because it was on offer in Tesco)
8oz caster sugar (I use normal granulated and wizz it in the processor to make it finer, basically so I don't have to store 2 bags of different white sugar)
8oz SR flour
1 x 200g carton of glace cherries chopped up a bit
1 x 100g packet of ground almonds
4 beaten eggs
1 capful of almond extract
marzipan
flaked almonds

Pre-heat your oven to Gas 4 (your oven may be hotter or cooler so adjust up or down 1 mark as you think fit)

The first job is to line your cake tin. When I make loaf cakes I use ready made cake tin liners but this round tin is 20cm diameter and I can only find 18cm diameter liners in the Pound shops.  Lining the tin is easy enough with greaseproof paper.  You need to line the base first and then do the sides.

Whisk the fat and sugar together for a couple of minutes until light and fluffy.  If you haven't got a mixer you can do this with a wooden spoon but it'll take a bit longer.

Add the eggs a bit at a time and if the mixture looks like it's splitting add a spoonful of the flour and continue till all the eggs are in. Whisk in a capful of almond extract.  Almond extract is slightly more expensive than almond essence but the flavour is much better and a small bottle lasts ages.

Fold in the flour slowly, mixing well until it's all added.

Fold in the cherries and ground almonds and mix so the cherries are well distributed.

Put 2/3 of the mixture in your tin and spread out so it's level.

Slice some marzipan about the thickness of a pound coin and lay over the cake mix.  I used to make a ball of marzipan and roll it out to the size of the tin, but to be honest this way is much easier and you can't tell the difference when the cake is baked.

Spoon the rest of the cake mix on top and level it off. Sprinkle with flaked almonds and bake in the middle of the over for 1 hour 30 minutes.  I put the tin on a baking sheet so it cooks more evenly.

Check your cake after 1 hour 20 minutes and if it's getting too brown you can cover it with a piece of foil so the almonds don't burn. It's ready when it starts to come away from the sides of the tin and is firm but springy when you press the top. You could also check it with a cake skewer but the marzipan tends to stick to them and gives a false impression that it's not cooked.  Every time I make it it takes a different time to cook.  This time it took 1 hour 45 minutes.

So there you have it; my cherry and almond cake.  Visitors welcome but it won't last long

Bye for now

Time for a new black bottom

Hello, nice to see you here again.

And a special greeting to the readers who came to visit us in the dry dock today. Sorry I missed you. I was in Tesco stocking up on essentials. Roger also appologises for not being able to chat to you properly. If he'd stopped painting the gunwale he'd have lost the "wet edge".  Hopefully we'll meet again for a proper chat soon.

The boat that had been in the dock before us was refloated and had sailed away by 9am on Saturday

Roger reversed into the dock and we were joined by Stuart and Coral on n.b. Bobyn who were to be our neighbours for the week.

The sluice gate was opened and the boats dropped down onto the bostocks that would support us while we carried out the works.

We thought the boat was in a bad state as it was quire bashed and rusty in places

It was also covered in weed which didn't make it look very pretty

Once the water had drained out of the dock Roger could power wash the hull and see the true extent of the wear and tear.

Considering we haven't blacked the boat for over 3 years and also taking into account the fact that we average over 800 locks and almost 1000 miles a year, the hull was in remarkably good condition. There was hardly any new pitting in the steel which meant that the mill scale had finally finished falling off and there was a considerable amount of blacking still firmly attached from last time we did it.

Our gunwales were in a terrible state as last time we'd used paint which turned out to be faulty and wouldn't dry and harden properly.  Roger wanted to strip it back to bare metal so he applied copious amounts of Nitromors paint stripper but it hardly made any difference. He ended up having to strip back as many layers of paint as possible using the sander. Not ideal and not a perfect result but it was as good as he could get it.

After applying some rust converter, primer and matt black paint the gunwales now look much better.

Actually blacking the boat is a fairly easy job once you've done the power washing and the hull has had time to dry properly.

We always use Comastic.  It's more expensive than other blacking materials but is easier to work with and drying time between coats is much shorter.  That meant that we could do 3 thick coats in 2 days before leaving it to harden properly for 3 days before we go back in the water.  The other advantage of Comastic is that it doesn't dissolve when it comes into contact with diesel, so when you cruise through diesel coated water from somebody's leaking engine your hard work isn't getting washed off.

It's also worth mentioning that we use really good quality rollers.  We used these Harris Powercoat Jumbo 4" masonry rollers which I bought in Wilko (much cheaper than B&Q).  You can get them in 10" but even Roger agrees that they are too heavy to use easily once laden with blacking. Cheaper rollers are available but I've found in the past that they tend to shed fibres and collapse after a while. The pile is also much thicker on these which means that the blacking is easily pushed into all the little pits and scrapes. Between coats you need to wrap the roller in cling film or foil to stop them drying out and we did 3 coats using only 2 rollers for the princely sum of £3.50 - bargain!

Obviously, as we were staying on the boat we still needed to use the drains etc. so we had to shove some pipe in the holes to direct the waste water away from the hull until the blacking had dried and hardened off.

3 coats later and the hull looks lovely again.  Shame most of our hard work won't be seen as it's below the water line.  You can see here the difference between one of our original anodes on the left which is now almost 8 years old and the new ones Roger fitted last November.  It shows that they work as the old one is being corroded away instead of the hull.

If you've got a bow thruster, don't forget to black up the tube

and don't forget the weed hatch either.  They're both places that rust easily.

I've mentioned a few times before that we've got a "Prop-Protector" fitted behind our propeller.  This cuts almost everything that tries to get tangled round the prop and Roger hardly ever has to go down the weed hatch.

You can see in this close up that something really strong has taken a nick out of the blade.  It was probably the cable strippings that we picked up in Birmingham a couple of years ago, nothing would have cut through that!  While it was easily accessible I've sharpened it with a sharpening stone and it's now as sharp as my carving knife so should easily cope with plastic bags etc.

We've still got a bit of touching up to do to the tunnel flashes on the stern but apart from that we're finished and just waiting for the blacking to cure ready for re-floating on Friday.

Chico's been on his holidays while we've been in the dock. He wouldn't have liked all the noise and I doubt we'd have managed getting him on and off the boat easily as access has been via a ladder.  The kennel's will bring him back to us on Friday afternoon and we'll be all set to continue with our cruising.

Hopefully I'll see you back here very soon.

Bye for now

Ducks, cyclists and a birthday

Hi, welcome back

Yesterday was David's birthday and we celebrated in style.

He started the day with a Breakfast Martini that Roger had made for him - gin, cointreau, lemon juice and marmalade.
I made him a birthday cake; cherry and almond with a layer of marzipan in the middle and complete with bunny girl candles (which I forgot to photograph).

We treated him to lunch in Chez Jules and then rounded the celebrations off with a light supper of tapas in The Blue Bell.  I'm not sure who enjoys their food more, but both Roger and David managed tapas and then a strawberry and marshmallow hanging kebab which was drizzled in chocolate sauce.

I was a bit confused when I opened the blinds this morning. There was a line of rubber ducks and ducklings right outside the kitchen window.  Opening the other blinds revealed a stall set up by CRT & the local police to "educate" cyclists into slowing down and giving priority to pedestrians. The police were also fitting free identity trackers into any bicycles that didn't already have them.

Nice idea, but I'd have been a bit more impressed if they hadn't stuck their flag pole right outside our cratch making it awkward for me to get Chico in and out!

It didn't bother us too much as today was the day were parting company with David and we were helping him up the staircase lock.  As a single-hander he manages normal locks with ease, but the staircase is a different matter as it's so deep.  I drove and Roger and David worked the paddles and gates.

There was a bit of excitement at the locks as we walked back down later. A private boat had gone into the top lock without checking that the other two were empty and had started letting the water out into full locks. Obviously the water had nowhere to go and overflowed flooding the whole area. The woman realised something was wrong and ran down to start emptying the middle lock without closing the top paddles which only made everything worse. I tried to tell the steerer what was happening but he was oblivious and didn't want to know.  Luckily a CRT guy arrived and spotted what they were doing and took charge. The sad thing is that there are large notice boards at both ends of the locks with very clear instruction of how to operate them. They just hadn't bothered to read them.

We've now said our fairwells to David who's going off cruising on his own for a while as we're going into the dry-dock tomorrow for blacking. We'll be meeting him again in a few weeks in Birmingham as he's coming on our Big Summer Adventure with us.  More about that later.

Hopefully there'll be a reasonable internet signal in the dock so I can show you how blacking is done as we do it.  If not I'll see you back here next week for a catch up.

Bye for now, take care

A Day Out At The Zoo

Hi, glad you could join me again.

We've had a really good day out today.  The moorings by Bridge 134 are only half a mile from Chester Zoo so we decided to pay them a visit.  It's over 20 years since we went to this Zoo and it's certainly changed a lot - and all for the better I might add.

This 8 month female old calf was really difficult to photograph as she was being closely guarded by the other females of the herd. Most of the time she was surrounded by 4 or 5 "aunties" and only briefly made a solo appearance.

This black rhino looks prehistoric

The three of us agreed that our favourite exhibits were the ones where you could get up close and personal with the animals.  The butterfly house was amazing and there were hundreds flying about.  This one took a particular shine to David.

The Fruit Bat Forest won our second vote but we weren't able to photograph the bats as it was very dark.  The Rodrigues Fruit bats were huge with wing spans of a couple of feet but they didn't fly near us. The Seba's Fruit Bats were much smaller and you could feel a rush of warm air as they flew past your face. It was extremely hot and humid in there but we stayed for ages as I find bats fascinating.

Most of the bird houses had free flying birds and you could get really close to some of them.

This one kept picking up twigs and flying away. It took me a while but I found where she was building her nest. On the wire mesh roof of another exhibit.

Chester Zoo have several Giant Galapagos Tortoises. This was the biggest and was a couple of feet tall.

OK, so we went to the zoo...........but there were boats in the new Indonesian Islands area so we had to go and have a look

and go on a boat trip (amazingly it was free)  and take a selfie

Beside one of the food courts there was a more familiar water display...........Very realistic, complete with leaking gates!

This little bird was absolutely gorgeous. Unfortunately I got so carried away trying to get a decent photograph that I drained the battery on my camera!

So the final photograph was taken by David.       One of the three Sumatran Tigers.

I hope you've enjoyed our day out.  Bye for now.  Come back soon