'Three wheels on my wagon'.

 Sept 19th late afternoon

Whistles, chirps, hellos and even a wolf whistle or two, what on earth was making that? I was intrigued, had to leave FS to find out where the noise came from and turns out a cage with a Grey Parrot had been placed on the roof of the boat behind. 

Hello was the word most spoken by that parrot, although the owner did say he sometimes said 'sod off'. Where that came from, she had no idea, but blames friends when they came to stay.

Walking back to FS, I noticed a chap with a fishing net trying to retrieve something from the depths. I walked up to see if I could help and was told the wheel from one of those foldable camping cart type wagons had come off as he stepped away from the boat and watched it disappear into the murk. He could see bubbles appearing and assumed that was where it landed. So I offered to fetch our rake and Ian brought out the litter picker. Then I mentioned a sea magnet, wondered if there were any metal parts to the wheel. At first, he said no but on closer inspection of the three remaining wheels, found a metal pin did go through the centre. A quick check with the magnet to see if it worked, we all ended up having a go trying to fish it out. A good hour was spent, but of that wheel, nothing was found.  We even pushed the boat out, moved it forward, then backward, but to no avail. In the end, we all gave up. I saw him later coming past FS with that wagon stacked high with rubbish bags and two cassettes. Thinking he had at last found that wheel, looked out to see only three wheels on that cart. We both looked at each other and almost together started singing' Three wheels on my wagon'!

The nights are drawing in, so Ian wanted to get started on the chimney collar before it got dark. His first  job was to dig out all the old packing, easier said than done. He used a hammer and screwdriver, (shock horror...a chisel is the one tool he does not have on the boat!) and then tried to drill the stuff out. Gosh, it was noisy. I was trying to watch a TV program, gave up as a bad job because even the volume up as high as possible, I couldn't hear a thing! Anyway he failed, went down as far as he could but still more remained. He decided to abandon the idea for today and try again tomorrow.