My partner was always banging on about heritage horse drawn canal boats and their place in English History, I’m Scottish, I kind of get it now. After my girls dream of sharing a canal boat was burnt & set afloat by drunks on the River Lea, she spotted an advert, all I kept hearing was ‘Starcross, Starcross’ like an earworm, didn’t pay much attention but time went past, again ‘Starcross, Starcross.. still for sale’ ‘ok, babe we’ll check out Starcross’, owners sounded lovely hmmmm…. got their cat ‘Whiskey’ out of the tree before we boarded Starcross for viewing, my first thoughts ‘its like a block of flats that fell over, with a thatched roof’ or a ‘an old country pub, turned into a bowling alley that floats, its 71ft long, not including the outboard engine, it was more like a ritual, where he mentioned that they were in a position of choosing the new custodians and mentioned that I could be in the runnings as I was hands on and good at DIY as well as a qualified mechanic. All seemed cozy enough we could not see any reason not to invest in this beautiful floating cottage, for what my girl termed ‘a drama free life’. She was able to obtain a loan for half and I was able to get the other half, we felt secure as in we had done checks, surveyed, freshly caulked and blacked, these people seemed genuinely concerned for the welfare of Starcross.
DO YOU WANNA HEAR A CHRISTMAS EVE NIGHTMARE!
Firstly our Volkwagon camper van engine siezed up on the M1, a car we hired got towed away and when eventually presented to view our boat it was lisping, we ran down only to find she had submerged to the bottom of the Grand Union Canal, even the log burner was submerged
We turned up the day before Christmas eve, with all our stuff to ready us for Christmas on the boat, we noticed straight away from the bridge at Apsley Lock that there was something strange about the boat it was lisping, we made our way to her and this is what we found… https://youtu.be/T_cORc5cAOM
The start of a year long trial and tribulations, it was mid pandemic we were unable to get any support if any type of rescue, what was supposed to be a festive celebration became ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’…. this blog a document of our journey.
yetanotherwyrdo 