Hearing that the insurance company was sending an inspector to survey the damage and argue the toss, we decided that we really ought to be there. So an early Monday morning start managed to get us to Piper Boats by 11:00am (gulp) to commence the wrangling.

This went much as expected. However, he did point out that (unrelated to our bridge disaster, and certainly not covered by any insurance), Song & Dance’s propeller had seen better days!

We’d no idea when this occurred. You occasionally hear objects clunking on the prop (shopping trolleys, lumps of wood and so on), but had never heard anything making a racket enough to cause that kind of damage. You’d have thought the damage might have been obvious on the occasional trips down the weed hatch, in which case the damage must have been recent, but equally it could have been done years ago.

Perhaps that explained the rather unusual noises when putting the propeller in reverse to stop the boat in a hurry. Ho hum… more expense!

At this rate, we’ll be buying shares in the Midland Expressway (M6 Toll Road).