At 9am the following morning, the rest of the fleet arrived from Acton Bridge and we all went into Dutton lock. It was an uneventful if rather cold and windy trip to Weston Marsh where we all prepared to lock down onto the Manchester Ship Canal. When the gates opened I had a pretty rough time of it as I had to back up in the lock to enable Parfield to pass, but ended up sat in a load of rubbish so couldn't engage gear otherwise it would have wrapped itself around the blade which wouldn't have been ideal on the Ship Canal passage. After quite a hairy run, we all went up into Ellesmere Port's bottom basin via the Ship Lock.

As I had booked a few days off work I was now stopping on the boat until the following Wednesday for the return trip.