The answer is: she looks very lovely indeed. All the scratches and scuffs that she had picked up during her life on the canal had been beautifully cleaned and polished away; the gel coat on the fibre-glass had been restored where needed; and she had new corner fenders.

But the first and most important transformation you notice is the new name. We had faffed around a bit trying to work out just the right font for the name, and exactly how we wanted it to appear - and it does look rather good.

The photo on the right isn't great and makes the name look fuzzy when it isn't - have a look at the original on Flickr here.

As you'll be able to see from our Flickr photos, the fenders that came with the boat are a little worse for wear. Mostly, they just need cleaning, but the bow fender is punctured (possibly done by us in a canal lock), so that's being replaced. Otherwise, she is definitely in great shape for being back on the river. We have our Thames licence (the geniuses at the Environment Agency decided to make them dark blue, on which the black type showing all the boat's details is completely illegible). There is a little more cosmetic work to be done - mostly things like curtains, but also some more serious stuff to fix the very minor damage we did to the windscreen going under Oxford Canal bridges. But, basically, she's ready to go.

Just as importantly, she has her mooring. The nice guy in the marina office told us where he thought we were going to be moored - the uncertainty being due to one record have been amended, but the other not yet having been changed. However, when we went down to the mooring, what we found was a little plastic sign screwed into the jetty, saying 'Wand'ring Bark'. We've got a named parking space.

It's not a bad space, either. The marina were very kind - because we told them we were relatively inexperienced - and gave us a mooring that was both fairly close to the marina entrance (coming from the river) and also close to their office, so we could signal for help if we found ourselves try to moor in strong winds, for example.

Our first trip of the season is planned for the Easter weekend, assuming the weather is ok. We're going to head off upstream - this time at a nice, relaxed pace, stopping from time to time to go and explore things on foot. I reckon we won't get much further than Windsor on Good Friday (and may even see if we can moor in the Windsor Marina, to which we have access because it's run by the same people as Penton Hook). Then our friend Esther from Devon will join us for the rest of the weekend. Can't wait.