Gone fishing

I needed more light to see where to put the screws for the thermal curtains I was putting up across the side hatch.  I opened one side door.  I opened it carefully because I knew the hinges were dodgy.  I didn’t open it carefully enough and it escaped my grasp and jumped into the river.

I could see it in the shallow water near the bank and I thought I’d be able to get it out with my sea searcher magnet.  I couldn’t find the magnet.  Went to T to borrow his.  Caught the door but was at the wrong angle to pull it in.  B came along to help, we decided we needed two magnets. Asked B if he had one he said ‘no, I borrow T’s if I need one’ asked everybody else but it seemed that everybody borrowed T’s magnet  if they needed one.  We tried again with one magnet : caught the door: pulled it just within reach: tried to grab it: it avoided capture and slid away under the boat.

Untied the bow and let the current take the boat out far enough to locate the door.  B did a balancing act along the gunwale with the magnet finds the door again starts to gently haul it out of the water and then watches it fall away and move further into the middle of the river. Citing cold hands and pressure of work B leaves me to it.

I suddenly remembered I’d tidied the back cabin when the washing machine was removed.  Looked in tidied compartments and found the sea searcher magnet.  That just proves tidying up is a bad idea, I’m not going to do it again.

Now I have two magnets and two new helpers.  The Mechanical Magician and the Landlord arrive, the boat is moved back and they perch on it’s outside edge and go fishing.  They catch the door.  They start to walk it gently towards the bow.  Almost there it suddenly drops away.  It disappears from view.

The fishing starts again. The rope on one of the magnet breaks, they search for it with the other one and catch the missing magnet.   The Mechanical Magician appears with a third magnet, a heavy beast that looks as if it will do the job. He slings it into the river. The rope breaks.  They go fishing for the third magnet. Retrieve the third magnet and then have difficulty separating them all.

They start all over again with three magnets on long ropes. The Landlord says they can feel something heavy down there, but it won’t be hauled up, he wonders if it’s a sunken narrowboat.  Over the next half hour they catch my boat, each others magnets, an awful lot of bottle tops (who would have thought that boaters drank that much) various screws and coins and eventually they catch the door.  Then they lose it again.

The fog rolls up the river, it is cold and getting dark and they go home to get warm. I cover the hole in the side hatch with cardboard.  We’ll have another try tomorrow.