Finished with Wetsuits Traditional Cache
Apiglet: Phil has died.
Gill
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(micro)
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After thirty years and one month we have sold our boat, and this cache is one of three traditional caches which celebrate thirty glorious years (and one month) of boating, the others in the series being Finished with Engines and Finished with Jigsaws.
While we were looking for somewhere to place Finished with Engines we thought of somewhere near here, on account of a disaster which ended up very satisfactorily. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.
We were just tootling along not far from home, passing a couple of fishermen, when the boat lost steering. In fact it lost power completely. The engine would go brrm brrm, but that was it. Oh dear – must be the gearbox. Expensive! Why we checked the weedhatch I’m not sure, but there certainly wasn’t any weed on the propeller. There wasn’t a propeller!
Well it must be in the water then. So we walked home and changed into our wetsuits (ex-cavers both) and returned to climb into the canal and look for the propeller with our feet. The fishermen thought it was as good as a pantomime! (Incidentally, there’s a ha-ha running all the way along beside the towpath. Pantomime. Ha-ha. Boom boom!)
We kept finding bottles and other rubbish and widened the search to yards away from the boat - perhaps it had kept turning as it went. And then I don't know what made us check the skeg – the bar connecting the base of the rudder to the base of the boat - but there it was!
The next problem was finding the key - the tiny thing that held the prop in place on the shaft. It could be anywhere, and so very like a pebble when you are looking for it with your feet. Triumph turned into despair, until we thought of looking on the skeg again. And it was there!
So we put the whole caboodle back together again, squelched off home and got changed, and were back on board in time for tea.
Park in Great Haywood with difficulty, or at the other bridge (co-ords given)
Cache is a little micro, so bring your own pen.
Very popular mooring spot at weekends and when there are fireworks at Shugborough.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Urnq urvtug.