CAPTAIN’S LOCK: Shore date 03/10/10
Copper Jewel Ready for the journey
We have collected the Captain & prepared the vessel for the journey. We would have piped him aboard but forgot the whistle. Anyway, he preferred steel bands – so we got a couple of pans & improvised.
Installed the Captain up front in the pointy bit & asked him to keep a look out. If we run out of green stuff & a cross-channel ferry appears, we’ve probably gone the wrong way. How he will impart this knowledge to us remains unclear, since we didn’t bring a ouija board either.
The Captain supervises the trip
As Commander on this trip, I have insisted on double rations of lavatory paper. Some elements of the journey may provoke an unnecessary reaction.
Acting Lieut. Commander, Caroley (no equity card) has abandoned her own vessel for the weekend to assist.
The Purser, aka Bunty (whose pursing when vexed, brings to mind a bad botox job) having stored the provisions, developed a case of leaking eyes & retired to the café with Able sea person Karen to gather herself, & then returned to sit for’ad, windlass at the ready.
The Purser loads the provisions
James from the yard saw us out of the marina, through the first lock & then left us to it.
Five minutes later, overwhelmed with an attack of the collywobbles, I wondered how to squeeze between Snowdrop & Elisha before lock no2. Thank you Mr & Mrs Snowdrop & Gareth from Elisha, who grabbed the centre line, offered words of encouragement & saw us through it.
We made it through the junction with the Shroppie without broadsiding the oncoming vessel & I discovered I have lightening fast reactions on reverse throttle.
It was necessary to tack down the first couple of miles whilst I refreshed my skills at coming in to shore. This did not cause a problem however, as smaller vessels gave way to avoid being broadsided, & larger ones probably stopped to admire my dexterous manoeuvring.
The next two locks & the rest of the day’s travelling passed without incident. Our only problem was calculating speed & distance to a convenient stopping place. Would it really be a problem to fit a speedometer to these things huh? I had planned to stop by 6.30, but the Purser insisted we found civilisation of some sort. We therefore chugged along with headlight & torch until 7.35, when lights, cars & pontoons appeared on the right.
At this point I threw in the towel, the soap & the rubber duck & pulled into the side as close as possible. We had to pull out the gangplank to offload the Purser & her mate, & tied up. (Many thanks to the unknown driver, who saw us pull in & gave them a lift to the main road to call a taxi back to the start).
We discovered the next day that ‘civilisation’ was called Over Water Marina, which opened in April.
Lt. C. Caroley got the rations out & we ended the day with a bottle of wine. The Captain sat on the stove & joined us.
As the evening wore on & feeling a little maudlin, I raised my glass
“Cheers Cap’n!… ‘Alas poor Yorik, I knew him’…”
Pause…Lt. Commander, slightly cross-eyed said,
“I thought his middle name was Gavin!”
Oh well, still no equity card then.
DATA: Start- Aqueduct Marina 1.30pm
End- Near bridge 80 (Bennets Bridge?) 7.35
Total time: 6hours 5mins
CAPTAIN’S LOCK: Shore Date 04/10/10
The rain started around 3.30am, continued past 6 am & by 10.o’clock was going for the non-stop, clog dancing world record. And we were aground. Suitably attired, we went out & attempted to shuffle off.
A BIG Thank you to Mike from Unchained Melody, who kindly (& with more cheerfulness than his soaking merited) came aboard & freed us. He then pointed out with a wry grin, that had we gone another 50 yards the night before, we’d have found the Marina entrance, which is where he jumped ashore. Ho hum.
Well, we’d started, so we thought we’d better make the attempt to finish. We wandered lonely, not so much as a cloud, more as a hippo with halitosis, since everyone else with more sense, stayed moored up.
Then the battle of the locks ensued. The first of the series through Audlem appeared, I lined us up & dropped the power. Then the surplus floodwater hit us & I pin-balled my way in.
‘ In any confrontation between the rock & the stream, the stream always wins, not from strength but from perseverance’
Quite! In any confrontation between several tons of boat and the stream, the stream still wins, not from size but from sheer amount of water. As for the boat versus an 8 & a half stone old biddy, the judo training from my younger days did not enable me to get my opponent off balance sufficiently, to perform Osotogari on it & wap it into submission either.
I tried various combinations of attack. I dropped the power before the pound & then went for it with more speed. I tried sailing into the flood & straightening up at the last minute. I tried sneaking up on it whilst whistling nonchalantly & still, I ricocheted off the walls of each one-all 19 of the buggers.
Thanks to the chap in the black fedora, walking his dog, who set one lock for us & told us cheerily that we had to be mad to be out at all in that weather. When we replied that we were on a schedule of sorts, he laughed & said he’d once been a barge owner.
We eventually emerged at Audlem top lock & pulled in, a surprisingly simple act suddenly.
The boat has more battle scars than a pit bull, I have a bruised eye & a lump on my forehead (because in my haste to shut the back hatch & limit flooding in the engine room, I walked into the tiller) Lt. Com. Caroley, in her haste to assist, fell off the back step & cracked her knee on the bunk & her elbow on the corner, so we limped into the galley & put the kettle on.
I probably knocked a couple of grand off the kid’s inheritance. Do I give a stuff? Currently No! Now soaked to the skin- why do they call them waterproofs when they’re clearly not? - we stripped off & sat shivering in bathrobes trying to warm up. We might have got drunk & skipped naked up the tow path at this point, but we were distracted watching Mrs-Clad-head-to-foot-in-bright-yellow-waterproofs, standing on the top lock playing windmills & screaming to her other half on board their boat. With frantic semaphore signals & “COME BACK! COME BACK! WILL YOU LISTEN TO ME!NO! NO! YOU’RE GOING THE WRONG WAY!” we watched fascinated, as he made several attempts to get in. Apparently, he’d got wedged on the first attempt. Based on that performance, God knows if they ever managed to reproduce, but I suddenly felt a whole heap better. At least my crew had offered soothing words of support & cracked jokes to keep my spirits up. This poor sod had another 14 locks to go.
Thanks to Bernie, Jeff & A.N. Other, who appeared behind us about half way through the Audlem flight, they let Carol go onto set the next lock as they closed up behind me. We met up with them later in the Talbot Arms in Market Drayton. They met some years ago whilst in the RAF. Now retired, they collect hire boats stranded along the system & return them to the relevant yards. It appears that they were taking a 9 berth to Banbury where they intended to collect a car & drive to collect the next boat. It was their fourth trip of the year. They’ve been doing this for the last eight years, at the start & end of the season & obviously have a great time.
DATA: Start-10.30 am Over water Marina; Break 1.50-2.50
End-6.00pm Market Drayton,
Total time: 7hrs 30mins
CAPTAIN’S LOCK: Shore Date 05/10/10
The Deputy Captain tackles a lock
What a difference a day makes. It was dry, good start AND sunny, bonus! We sauntered along to The Talbot Arms to pick up our latest crewmember, First Mate Clarty. She’d managed to get lost & was later than expected.
As she caught sight of the boat & the Captain sitting up front, she too developed an attack of leaky eyes, & took a few minutes to store her stuff. Then without a fuss, cast off & moved us round under the bridge to the water point, effortlessly pulling into a space between two moored boats that, frankly, looked as though a shoe horn might be required.
We discovered what the Captain’s ingenious device by the front step was for, a plastic pipe with a sliding mechanism inside, which tells you when the water tank is full & almost empty. Clever!
Lt. Commander Caroley checks the water tank
We promoted First Mate to Deputy Captain & she tackled the next five locks with panache & the kind of aplomb that befits the Captain’s daughter. I think we’ve found his natural heir. No tacking down the cut from this one-he taught her well.
D.Captain Clarty is courteous to a fault. We understood the snail’s pace past moored boats, under bridges & round bends, but her failure to speed up on clear stretches left us perplexed.
I went aft, & offered to rip two cupboard doors off so that Caroley & I could paddle, but her glazed expression & beatific smile, made us suspect that she’d been possessed by the spirit of the Old Captain. Horror! She’d gone into ‘I’m-retired-&-in-no-hurry’ mode. We remedied this by dangling assorted foodstuffs off a fishing line at the front within her eye line, which seemed to work quite well for the rest of the day.
On one of the Tyrley locks, one of the bottom gates swung open just as the boat pushed back & then caught her butt button (eye-watering) & we had to close the paddles down to release it. You DO need to keep your eyes open doing this!
DATA: Start-12.30; 3.30 aground by Knighton wharf; 4.20 past bridge 42
End- 6.35 Norbury Junction
Total time: 6hrs 05mins
CAPTAIN’S LOCK: Shore date-06/10/10
Looks like they got themselves a convoy
Another great day for travelling & it was fairly uneventful until late afternoon. We were approaching a bend somewhere just before Calf Heath. A small NB was moored on the left just in front of the bend & a larger one was approaching at speed. The larger boat appeared to be stopping at first, & then decided to keep coming. D Captain was crawling past in her usual fashion & trying to keep as far right as she could, but it was very over grown at that point. The bigger boat sailed past much faster, & we ended up grounded again. The owner of the smaller craft-The Answer- issued instructions from the towpath, whilst Carol & I poled us off. A couple of minutes & we were back on track.
DATA: Start- 10.10, left The Anchor Inn; 10.55, bridge 35-Navigation Inn; 11.00,The Boat Inn; 11.05, Cowley Tunnel (Did we miss something? We only saw one!); 11.40, The Royal Oak; 11.45, we passed High Onn bridge & NB Tomorrow, (we might have stopped to say Hi, but it looked deserted); 12.55, Wheaton Aston; 1.50, Stretton Aqueduct; 2.15, Brewood; 3.15, M54 bridge; 3.35, Wolverhampton Boat Club; 4.05, Autherley Junction & lock; 5.40, ran aground; 5.55 Calf Heath bridge 74; 6.20, we approached a red light that shines down the cut at this point. We wondered what the hell was going on. Eventually, we passed a large industrial unit on the left & the red light turned out to be from a set of traffic lights at the main gate-very confusing if you don’t know about it.
End- 6.45 Gailey 5day moorings, near Canoeing Club.
Total time; 8hrs 35mins
CAPTAIN’S LOCK: Shore Date 10/10/10
When we finished tying up at Gailey on 06/10/10, it was already dark. What appeared to be canoes went flashing downstream at a rate of knots. We are almost certain that they were in fact a pod of the rare Penkridge porpoises.
I recall walking towards the car park with a vague idea that we were to be transported somehow to another place. The next thing we remembered was walking back towards the vessel in daylight. We appear to have lost four days somewhere & Lt. Commander Caroley has vanished, although two replacement crewmembers have appeared calling themselves Pretty Officer Spanner & Able Sea Person Amos
Pretty Officer Spanner & Able Sea person Amos
I do hope that the Lt. Commander is safe, she had brain surgery on June 1st & only got permission to drive a car again at the start of September, but I wonder if the new brain can remember who she is-she could be wandering around in another dimension with amnesia.
Strange things happen here. We know from experience. The ship’s cat Zebedee vanished here in exactly the same place in June 2004.
He’d had a tussle with a car on the bend outside our lodgings & suffered a fractured skull & broken jaw. After three weeks he’d been released. It took a further week to find something he could eat & four weeks after that, First Mate Clarty had taken him along on the Captain’s latest voyage- strangely enough, the very one we were currently trying to complete-but in the opposite direction. Spooky- huh?
On the second day, the Captain had cast off preparing to leave, when Beelzebub’s henchman had appeared on a fearsome four-wheeled engine along the bank. Zebedee, spooked, although fastened into a harness, had clawed his way over the First Mate’s shoulder, made a flying leap for the boat & dangling over the water, had slipped through his restraint & landed in the cut. The First Mate leant across to fish him out & pushed the boat out-literally. She fell in on top of him & appeared to crack her head on the side. Her sister, Pretty Officer Spanner, jumped in to save her & the Captain reported in his log that, he sat back, lit another Hamlet & started to hum-dum…DUM…DUM…dum... As the cat was lifted onto dry land, he took off up the towpath with all the invisible hounds of hell on his tail.
I received an urgent call to present myself at the scene with The Bell (a present from Wales) with which to recall the animal as he’d been trained in the manner of Pavlov’s Dog, so that when rung, he knew he was to be IN! Lt Cmdr Caroley & I spent five days prowling the towpath with said bell, every day & a couple of nights- when the noise from the M6 was slightly less. We found him six days later, having survived a stampede of bullocks, a spooked horse, and a leap over a barbed wire fence & a tour of Rodbaston’s grounds (us, that is) a little thinner- since he was incapable of feeding himself due to his injuries, & forcibly retired him from future cruises.
So it was, that this morning I called into the little shop at Gailey to reacquaint myself with the wise & ancient Lady of the Tower, who remembered the incident & to inform her that although he subsequently developed a dickey ticker, he & his brother were alive & well & will be 11 in May.
Oddly, as we passed upper lock, we espied another poster proclaiming a missing cat-a tabby this time. We now suspect that this place may be the Bermuda Triangle of the canal world-The Penkridge Parallelogram.
We also appeared to run out of water at this point-which was odd, since we’d only filled up at Market Drayton.
At 2.20pm we pulled alongside Maplewood Marina, where ALL the taps were labelled NOT FOR DRINKING. First Mate Clarty went round the corner to look for another source, only to be confronted by a lady-I use the term lightly-who informed her that, “This is a PRIVATE marina, we don’t let ANYONE have ANY water!”
The First Mate, invoked the ‘curse of the seven snotty orphans’ on her and her marina. (This is a little known ancient Cheshire curse, which is Karmic in operation- ie. you reap what you sow) Around 4.30, whilst checking on the First Mate, I noticed the water pump had not been switched on-humph!
Approaching Milford Bridge, we lost power & limped into shore. First Mate looked at me blankly, I looked back & inspected my fingernails for help- a form of scrying in the modern world. Eventually, we located the weed hatch, undid the clamp, wrestled the cover off & I had a furkle round in the muddy ditch water (having first disabled the engine & removed the key) & found nothing amiss. At the same time Upon Reflection chugged by & stopped to offer assistance if possible, which was kind. I was on the verge of fetching a hammer to start hitting something; engine; First Mate; passing duck; when Pretty Officer Spanner paged the Oracle (Emma the Erudite) who told us to try banging it in reverse & rev-ing the nuts off it. It seemed to work. Whatever had caused the problem had gone & we started to move forward again. We sailed across Tixall Wide & made it to the Junction where we turned right. We had taken a car up to Great Haywood Marina the previous evening & booked a mooring for the week, so we started to look out for it.
I suspected that we were in trouble when a sign for Little Haywood limped by, followed by two more locks, which weren’t on the itinery. When Colwich slipped into view, I confess, I started to hyperventilate, and Pretty Officer Spanner & ASP Amos were looking distinctly poorly. Spanner had spent a week trying to blag tickets from her boss for the Michael Buble concert at the NIA that night, as a treat for Amos (who thinks he’s F-I-T) & had managed to acquire two the night before. Now they were both apparently stranded at sea.
We called for reinforcements & arranged for two cars to collect us from Wolesley Bridge, approx. 15 mins from home. One took the two off duty crew back to collect their own transport to Birmingham, the other took First Mate & me to Great Haywood to retrieve car number one, which I then drove to Gailey to collect the First Mate’s. We later received a Morse text informing us that said tickets were ‘FRONT ******* ROW!’ & it appears that they were blessed by the God’s sweat as he performed.
Data: Start; 10.00 Gailey; 10.27 Brick kiln Lock; 11.20 Otherton Lock 36; 11.45 Cross Keys bridge & Penkridge Lock; 12.20 Longford lock; 12.50 Longford bridge; 12.55 Teddesley bridge 89; 1.12 Park Gate lock & bridge; 1.30 Shott Hill lock & bridge; 1.55 Acton bridge 93; 2.08 Roseford bridge 94; 2.20 Maplewood marina; 3.00 Radford bridge 99; 3.20 St Thomas’ bridge 101; 4.10 Stoneford bridge 103; 4.30 Milford bridge 105; 5.00 Tixall lock; 5.30 Swivel bridge 108; 6.35 Colwich bridge 71
End; 6.45 Wolesley Bridge 70
Total time; 8hrs 45mins
CAPTAIN’S LOCK; Shore Date 12/10/10
Overcast, dull but dry.
First Mate Clarty drove us to Wolesley Bridge. Although not before she’d taken ex-ship’s cat Zebedee to the vet for his compulsory (& expensive) review. We are obliged to do this in order to ensure the following six months supply of heart tablets, diuretics & eye cream.
One would assume, that having an enlarged heart- with x-rays to prove it- was not going to suddenly disappear overnight, or that we are not stupid enough to keep paying £24 a month for medication for a dead cat. Our vet thinks differently, so we are required to carry him in & out again, to prove that he’s still alive AND pay for the privilege.
Anyway, cat certified breathing, we returned to the boat. We noticed that the one, remaining middle fender had disappeared. The Penkridge Parallelogram strikes! Subsequent investigation of the photo store, show that it was there on arrival at Gailey & missing the morning we left – we watch too much CSI in this house!
The journey was fairly uneventful, but once again we have no water. I tried various combinations of inverter switches, main board switches & even the thing that looks like a consumer unit, but still nothing.
We decided to call in at Kings Bromley Marina to-a) check the stoppage at Fradley had finished, put in more fuel, since a stick in the tank tells us we have SOME, but not how much of it we have & c) allow Claire to get warm. She doesn’t usually feel the cold but it was one of those days.
As we approached the pontoon I spotted a notice asking boats to reverse onto the mooring for fuel. This displeased the First Mate, & her features contorted like a champion gurner- she looked a lot like the Purser having a ‘bunt’ at that point too- as she shuffled back & forth. I attempted to lighten her mood by singing ‘Aye- aye- aye- aye- aye- conga’ but to no avail.
We had to sit around & wait for reception to re-open at 2.0 so we emptied the loo to kill time. Having supplied the fuel, the nice lady coerced a chap called Gerry from another boat to look at the electrics. He seemed to get the water going again & we left. Five minutes later it had once again, disappeared up its own orifice.
BW was still at Fradley but had finished cutting trees back on the bank.
Emerging from the lock & heading down towards the Mucky Duck- it was virtually boat bound.
Obviously a number had stopped below lock during the stoppage & decamped to the pub & lingered, or they had decided that they hadn’t time to make the next beer stop, since they were double parked down the left bank & nose to tail down the right.
I directed Clarty down the Coventry section & through the swing bridge & shortly afterwards we pulled into Streethay Wharf.
DATA: Start; 10.40 Wolesley Bridge; 11.05 bridge 68; 11.25 Rugeley bridge 67; 11.50 bridge 64; 12.15 Armitage Tunnel;
12.20 Plum Pudding; 12.40 Kent’s Bridge 59; 1.00 Crown pub bridge 58; 1.20 Magazine Bridge; 1.35 King’s Bromley Marina; 2.25 Left King’s Bromley Marina 2.30 bridge 54; 4.00 Fradley Junction; 4.25 Fradley bridge 90; 4.35 Bell & pipe bridges; 4.45 bridge 88
End; 5.05 Streethay Wharf
Total time 6hrs 25
In the process of moving the boat from Church Minshull to Streethay we calculated our carbon footprint as follows
03/10/10 1x car to Church Minshull + return to Lichfield 160 miles
1x taxi to Church Minshull 13miles
Carbon footprint total 173 miles= one hobnailed boot
04/10/10 No cars = barefoot
05/10/10 I x car to Market Drayton 59miles = one flip flop
06/10/10 2 x cars to Gailey @ 24 each 48miles
1 x car to Lichfield 24miles
1 x car to Market Drayton 34miles
1 x car from Market Drayton to Lichfield 58 miles
Carbon footprint total 164 miles = one welly
10/10/10 2 x cars to Great Haywood + one return 36 miles
2 x cars to Wolseley Bridge 24miles
1 x car to Lichfield 12miles
1 x car to Great Haywood & return to Lichfield 14miles
1 x car from Great Haywood returned to Lichfield 13miles
Carbon footprint total 99miles = one brogue
12/10/10 1 x car to Wolseley Bridge 12 miles
1 x car to Streethay 8miles
1 x car to Wolseley Bridge 12 miles
2 x cars return to Lichfield 24 miles
Carbon footprint total 56 = one soggy sock
Total car miles 551 = One Doc Marten’s jack boot with metal toe cap
Lesson: to move one boat any given distance-calculate the distance & double the cost of the fuel allowance
This journey was undertaken in memory of Dave Simon
26/02/1947 – 28/06/2010
Owner & Captain of The Copper Jewel
By his family Chris, Emma, Claire & Hannah
With help from Carol, Karen & Amy
With love
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