Return to Harefield Marina

Needing to be home today, and bearing in mind the likelyhood of extra weekend traffic we left our mooring at 6:30 and were immediately joined by another boat off the Winkwell Visitor Moorings.  The relationship worked well enough until Hemel Hempstead when another boat moved out in front, effectively forcing us to join this boat in the first of the Apsley Lock.  This man & wife team looked highly organised immediately with the bike for the lock wheeling Annie and Dave at the helm.  With our luxury of an organised four man/woman crew we fairly shot down the cut and I was beginning to enviseage a 3 pm arrival at Harefield.  However, at Cassio Lock we found ourselves behing two single handers and upcoming boats, so quite a long wait there but time for lunch.  Annie was excellent at cycling on ahead and helping the single handers through with the aid of our lock-running crew, but a burst of opposite direction traffic really slowed things down.  After Rickmansworth we were in the clear again and gave us an arrival time of 16:00.   Once again, the car battery was absolutely flat, in spite of the extra large 1 foot square solar panel which is supposed to eliminate such problems.   There was nothing for it but to attach it to the boat batteries with jump leads and run the engine for 45 minutes.  Tomorrow will be maintenance and boat cleaning day.