Oh dear it goes from bad to worse.

Watched TV last night, charged laptops, phones and tablets and the battery volts were only down to 88% this morning. Sunrise today was at 4.44 am and in anticipation of another fine day, Ian had swung the panels last night to catch the first rays.  By 9 am the volts were over 90 % If only we had another week of this good weather than our worries would be over. Unfortunately, the worries remain as you will see later.

With temperatures predicted to be in the low 30's, I left Ian checking our batteries and set off for a walk. One lock up and the pound was very low.

And by this bench a disgusting amount of rubbish! Two volunteer lockies had arrived to run water down from the next pound to top up between lock 8 and 9 and I happened to mention the rubbish by lock 8. "Three months worth" was one of the volunteers replay. They too had only started back on Monday.  One black bag was all they had with them and I expected that would soon be filled. Give them their due though, when I saw them later they had walked to the facilities at Bradley Green bridge, dumped what they had collected and fetched another black bag to tackle the rubbish by lock 8. To say they looked hot was an understatement and when I mentioned a cup of tea they said no kettle was supplied anymore because of the covid cross-contamination from one volunteer to another. Flasks it was to be then.

In that low pound was a duck with newly hatched ducklings. She was determined to get below lock with her brood but because of the lack of water, no way would those ducklings have made it onto the bank.

Ducklings in the left corner by the lock gate

So she gave up

But then tried again

And again

I left her too it but on my return two of the ducklings were missing. Once that pound had been filled the bywash started flowing and I found the two below lock in the long pound with us! I tried with my net to catch them and return them to mum but to no avail. They can survive without mum if no preditor gets them so hope they make it.

Mid-afternoon Ian decided to phone Cox's to see how the repair was going. I could tell by the way the conversation was going that the news wasn't good. Turns out its the electronics that's kaput which is the reason the brushes needed changing so frequently. Friday now was out of the question as new parts had to be ordered. A time scale of 5 to 6 days was mentioned, no blooming good to us! As I mentioned earlier if we had another week of wall to wall sunshine we could just about manage but the weather is set to change tomorrow and without the solar panels putting in a charge we were well and truly up the creek without a paddle! Thinking caps on and our only solution was to find a marina with power. The nearest one was at Springwood Haven and hopefully, they would have space. Well they didn't!!! But hats off to them because once we told them of our plight they said space would be found even if we had to go on top of another boat! (pity them on the bottom😊) So tomorrow we set off early to finish the flight which will probably take a couple of hours now especially as a boat has come past taking the empty lock. More work for Ian me thinks.

I mentioned yesterday about the bike rack handles overhanging the stern fender. Well with nothing else to do, Ian got out his trusty hacksaw and took a good 9" off the ends. That should do the trick and saves me having to continually go backwards and forwards with the revs to keep it away from the back gate. Honestly, anyone listening would think I was a novice, okay, okay, as Ian always tells me, I'm not that good!!!!

Oh and guess who caught us up. Yep, our cruising buddies Jim and Jenn.

Dire Straits moored behind.