Chevroches, Canal du Nivernais

Wednesday, 15 July 2009

Alarmed (and alerted) in Groningen

No pictures accompany this post. You may be glad about that. Arrived in Groningen yesterday. Biggish city, biggish university, biggish multicultural community - not sure if they're students or not. Rob cycles off on an expedition to find boat spares. Now, I'm a bit wary of being left on the boat alone. I always think that something's going to go wrong....So, I'm having a shower, covered in soap, hair full of conditioner and an alarm goes off. A loud, high pitched, ear piercing screech - and it's coming from our engine room. First thought - panic. We're in a marina and any minute now people will be swarming over the boat and I have no clothes on! Second thought - we might be on fire, so does it matter? There's a door from the shower into the engine room which I wrench open and crawl in following the now amplified noise and hoping that no-one is gong to come crawling in after me. (Don't try to visualise this). I say engine room but it's really just a bit of room around an engine. So lots of head and shin banging and swearing. No fire thank goodness. It is of course the bilge alarm - I realise the problem as I splash into water at the bow. I know enough to pull the sensor out of the water and so shut off the din and the prospect of unwanted help. It's not a Titanic situation, there's no water flooding in and it's clearly the shower that's the problem. Turns out both shower and bilge pumps have failed.
You know it doesn't make a blind bit of difference if you leave conditioner in your hair for 2 minutes or 2 hours.

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