Friday 5th April. I booked the bridge 24 hours in advance as required and for 0745 hours on Saturday 6th April to gain access to the Sharpness Canal after spending the last 5 months working on Wye Invader Two, and following her trip to Monmouth a few days ago, a distance of just over 110 miles did not show or highlight any problems, so with a strong headwind and sharing the water with HERMAS, the main problem for today was clearing the exit bridge, gaining access to the Marina and then mooring up on my own while going into the mooring stern first, all good fun and by 0815 hrs it was job done. With the Lock in Gloucester out of commission, Wye Invader Two could be spending a lot more time on the River Severn downstream of Sharpness this year!

Over the last few weeks we have been busy removing bitumen from the hull of Wye Invader Two, and running the engine to top up the batteries. A couple of weeks ago after I removed the diesel spill mats from under the engine bilge, not only did we have a small leak of diesel but also antifreeze. On further investigation the coolant was coming out of the water pump from the fan bearing, so I’ve now replaced the water pump. At the same time, with the bilge mats removed, the diesel leak became more apparent, this was traced to the main fuel pipe from the filter to the injection pump so a new fuel pipe and copper washers have been fitted.