A shorter day, but a wet one

Obviously, rain was forecast today, but we decided to go ahead anyway as it's meant to be even windier tomorrow. We were up early and set off at 6:15, so managed to get three hours under our belts before the rain started. We agreed we'd take turns steering today, and the other person would stay in the hold with the dogs. As long as they had someone with them, they were quite happy with that. Poor Jim, he got the heaviest rain on two of his shifts - although on the second one, he had just insisted on taking over. It was quite heavy going as there was a fair amount of wind even today. No one did shout at me for going too fast past their moored boat, but if they had, I had my reply ready, which was that they'd have liked it even less if I couldn't steer. It's very picturesque mooring opposite open fields, but you do tend to get big Woolwiches blowing into you. I thought of another good rule of thumb today as well, on encountering yet another boat tied up just out of sight on a bend - you can't slow down once you've started turning...

Anyway, we reached Braunston at about quarter past three, and of course there was nowhere to tie up. I found a space that was just four or so feet too short, so I asked the wide beam behind, and Jim asked the boat in front (either a converted historic boat or a very good copy, I didn't look too closely but I thought the former) if they could move a few feet - both had space to. Well the one in front refused outright, even though there was another ring between them and the marina exit - on the grounds that it was outside the boundary of the designated 48 hour mooring. The wide beam said that he would only if he still had line of sight for his satellite dish. I suppose we should be grateful that he apparently did, and we have squeezed in. Unfortunately we are facing the wrong way and it's a 48 hour mooring with the restrictions presumably not due to come in for another week. I was kind of banking on/assuming that there were some 14 day moorings here, but no. We have decide to sleep on it and suss things out tomorrow.