I remember trying to get down the arm to Aylesbury before the locks shut for the day to be greeted at the last lock by the lock keeper laughing as he put the padlock on stopping me above the lock, there was no love lost between the lock keeper his son and ACS.
This meant I had to leave my little marine ply cruiser tied to the towpath whilst I went away to work for a couple of weeks, I took the outboard and boat contents home with me.
Sometime in that period my mother had a call from the police asking my whereabouts as the boat was sunk and they were concerned I might be inside. She assured them I was OK and the boat remained where it was for the time being.
A while later duly returned with the boat trailer ( I said it was small at 14ft) put the trailer half in the canal, there was no hard edging, tied the trailer to a tree, winched the boat onto the trailer, then winched the trailer out of the canal and assed the damage. There was a spark plug sized hole neatly drilled in the bottom of the boat so I screwed a spark plug in there and relaunched the boat and took it down to the basin.
Over the following weeks I discovered through the grapevine that it was the lock keepers son who had drilled the hole and I worked out a way if getting my own back.
He had a motorcycle that he used to leave on the road and one night I filled his fuel tank, there were no locks on tanks in those days, with cement. Took him ages to work out why it wouldn't go and to correct it.
I was 24 at the time and a bit of a rebel🤔