The Day of Reckoning

Descending Adderley Locks on my sixtieth birthday

It's time again to count up and record the year with Starcross. Every year I take note of the time spent aboard, the miles covered and the locks passed through. At first I did it to sort of justify the expense of owning a boat, but although I don't feel the need to do that any more I still find the figures of interest, as I hope you will.
Here then is 2010 on Starcross, with previous years included for comparison:
2010:   69 days on board        508 miles    276 locks
2009:   62                             414.5          230
2008:   64                             396             206
2007:   41                             344             181
2006:   60                             514.5          378
2005:   63                             520.5          777


The amount of time spent aboard, although the highest-ever annual figure, is not wildly out of line with previous years (except for 2007 when Starcross was out of action for four months following a major breakdown). Mileage has increased steadily since then and is now almost back to the levels of the first two years of ownership, whilst the number of locks is again higher than at any time since 2005/6 when we were based at Lowsonford on the Stratford Canal and cruised the heavily-locked waters of the south midlands and where even a simple winding operation from the mooring required passing 14 locks!).
As I retired in October I had hoped to get even more use out of the boat this year but some planned winter trips didn't happen due to the ice and snow and the frozen canals.  On top of this I also did two trips on Kris and Bernard's Sunshine: from Market Harborough to Rugby and Devizes to Bradford-on-Avon  - although I don't include these in the annual totals.
Incidentally, the figures for 2011 currently stand at 1 day 0 miles 0 locks, but it's early days yet!