It's over, hooray!

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At last the dry docking was over and we could escape back to the canals and rivers. This calls for champagne as we will have our TRIVW certificate and the boat looks great. With a clean painted bottom, Waterdog could now achieve the 11km/hour prescribed by the regulations and we also noticed our diesel consumption dropped to about 2/3 of what it had been before the dry docking. The engine cooling system was much more robust to clogging and we had an anchor the right size for the boat. Rust around the boats rubbing strake had been treated or cut out and the rubbing strake was now complete.

Open dry dock

The dry dock gate was lifted by crane and placed out of the way

Excited Tilly

All very exciting for Tilly!

Cruise home

Here was the lock that sometimes resembles a washing machine on rinse cycle (Monceau-Sur-Sambre). Lorna with 2 ropes on the bow waiting for the surge to arrive.

 

Scared Tilly

Soon after tying up at in Erquelinnes we had thunder, lightning and hail stones to remind us it was summer 2011. The hail stones hitting the roof were so noisy that they drowned out the thunder but this didn't stop Tilly from trembling.

Hail storm

The hail stones seemed to be up to 25mm diameter and the big ones made good splashes in the harbour. Some can be see melting on the coaming roof and the car suffered about 6 small dents in the roof and bonnet.

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