It was the turn of Elsie, our younger granddaughter to be with us over Easter, Nancy was with us last year (2018).
It was all a great experience for her, being amongst all the boats in the Marina, looking after the hose reel while filling the fresh water tank and loading up from the van.
She had a few goes at steering the 60 feet of Chrissie down the canal.
It’s not easy, you’d think the boat would steer straight once in a straight line, but it needs constant attention due to the depth of water, wind, shape of the canal bottom etc, but she did very well at it.
And there’s no point in trying to go quickly, it causes excessive wash that damages the banks, makes it even more tricky to control and it doesn’t actually go much faster anyway, but wastes fuel.
At the start of every years cruise we hire a van to take all our stuff to the boat. It’s great to have Elsie sit between us up-front, good views and easier to interact with her. This year we kept the van over Easter to take Elsie back home to Exeter. Our return journey was by train from Exeter to Droitwich and we thought we’d give “Split-ticketing” a go. Certainly much cheaper but look how many tickets we had to print off at Exeter Station.
Back home we had some Exmouth Beach-time with them.
