A Visit to the Dry Dock

Last week, Uppie the narrowboat was due to be moved into Mr Steve the boat-painter's dry dock at Middlewich.  

Mr Steve invited Polar and Grizzly to watch, as Uppie would be the first boat into the dock for years.  We bears all wanted to go too but Polar said it might be a bit dangerous for small bears and she wasn't sure she could keep an eye on all three of us. 

The smaller bears agreed that, as I was the first boating bear, I ought to be our representative at the dry dock's opening ceremony.

'You must be very careful and sensible, Sonning,' said Grizzly, so I promised I would be.  I hoped there would be flags and bunting, tea and cake, and a ribbon to cut, but there wasn't, probably because of the nasty virus.

Mr Steve and his friends had done a huge amount of work at the dry dock, re-covering the shed with big sheets of cladding and cleaning lots of mud and silt out from the dock.  It looks huge, doesn't it?  

I asked Grizzly what was the biggest boat that would fit in there.  'A full-length narrowboat, 72 feet,' he said.  'Although it's longer and wider than that, the only way to get to it is via the narrow locks of the Middlewich flight!'

Then we saw Mr Steve on Uppie, coming down through the lock above the dry dock - backwards!  Uppie looked so smart, I almost had leaky eyes.

Mr Steve steered the boat into the dock, switched off the engine and jumped off, then he and his pals used ropes to move Uppie right into the centre.  

Mr Steve and Mr Dave then had to drop some big planks into the water, to close the way into the dock, rather like lock gates do.  Once they were in place, Mr Steve could open the paddle that empties the dock, which is like the paddles on locks.  All the water runs away through a channel to the canal below the locks, but I was a good and sensible bear and didn't go too close to look.

Because the planks are leaky, Mr Steve's friends put a big tarpaulin in front of them to stop too much water leaking back in.  Soon, we could see parts of Uppie's hull that are usually under water!

When most of the water was out, Mr Steve and Mr Dave got to work with tools like giant wiper-blades on sticks to get all the silt that had come in with the canal water cleared away.

While they were busy, we could take a closer look at Mr Steve's sign-writing, on the side that had been away from the towpath when we came up from Northwich.

Uppie is going to have a new cratch cover fitted, so we will have our little dining room - and small bears' look-out cabin - back in use soon.

Grizzly has asked Mr Steve if Uppie can have a bigger propeller too, to give us a little more power when we are on big rivers like the Thames and the Trent, so we don't nearly get swept away again!

In this photo you can see a boat out on the canal and some water leaking in around the planks, but Mr Steve won't get wet feet because there is a little channel across the floor that channels it all into the outflow.

When the dock was dry and they had finished talking to Mr Steve, Polar and Grizzly said it was time to go home for lunch, so I went for another quick look at Uppie and to say 'bye, bye,' for now.

'See you soon, Uppie!' I said.  I do hope we can have more boating adventures before too long.