Members' 2003 "picnic"

It has become a tradition to have a few members' cruises  and the main ones are the "frostbite cruise" in early January and a cruise to Ratho later in the year. The 2003 cruise was held on Sunday,  13th September with muster time being 10.30 at Drumshoreland, where Roseann was moored. Dave's boat, Caruso II, also moors there but as the numbers wanting to go grew, I thought we should have some more capacity and I got up at the crack of dawn and took Gamebird along from her mooring at Ratho. It was great to see so many members there to take part in the trip and we sorted ourselves out between the three boats, making sure that the dogs were also evenly distributed. We set off but as Roseann was being turned ready for the off,  disaster struck and she refused to go any further! She was attached to the back of Gamebird (this is becoming  a habit) and we set off but poor wee Gamebird was finding it hard going towing Roseann with passengers on board. We stopped at the M8, tied Roseann on the offside and loaded all the passengers onto Caruso and Gambird. We then had  a super cruise through to Ratho where we enjoyed a bar lunch in the Bridge Inn. Over lunch, the main topic of conversation was what to do about Roseann's engine? We agreed that we need to replace it but what would we use for money?

After lunch, we gathered for the group photo before piling into the boats and setting off for Drumshoreland. Just a couple of hundred yards from Ratho disaster struck again when Gamebird lost all drive. A  check of the weed hatch revealed a little weed but not enough to stop the engine so we tried again. She started fine  but again lost power very quickly. Without Iain being there to diagnose the problem, it was thought better to tow her back to her moorings (the other side of Ratho) and  return to Drumshoreland by car. With eight people on board, we had plenty of willing "horses" but they soon found how difficult it is to pull even a light boat when the weeds between the tow path and the canal are over six feet high.  With Gamebird safely moored, we turned our attention to how to get back to Drumshoreland and it soon became obvious that you can't fit eight adults and  three dogs into a Citroen C5 estate. Some people very quickly volunteered to wait till a driver came back for them and returned to the bar.  The rest of us went back to Drumshoreland where we found that   Caruso had towed Roseann back from the M8 to Drumshoreland and we helped Dave moor her before a driver was despatched to "rescue" the others from the pub!

Despite all the problems, everyone  present agreed that it had been a very enjoyable day out!

PS oh, the embarrassment when I discovered on Monday that Gamebird's problem was lack of diesel :-)

Here are a few photos of the event