alan_fincher

Are any listed in central London then? I thought they explicitly said they had withdrawn any option of winter moorings being offered in central London?

"Flamingo" and "Trojan" wee leap-frogging each other on the final stages of the trip up here. Athy was also noted doing the long walk with a cassette on a trolley, something I've also just done but in the rain. It's a long way around to the (very odldly designed!) facilities, but rather less for us than Athy. Anybody who was here last night, but failed to discover the truly excellent brass band playing in the Barlow missed a rare treat. They were stunningly good. Lots of great things happening this year - where else do you get to see a steam narrow boat tug of war. Also some real treats in terms of casual visitors. For example we have had two great nephews of Leslie Morton, ("Mr Willow Wren") who are researching him, and showing huge interest in our boat

Thanks to all who have contributed to this thread. I confirm that an incident report has been submitted, but we did deliberately take some time to consider how we worded it, and to make sure it stuck solely to facts, and to take any emotion out of the topic. When I hear anything from CRT, I will, of course, let you know their reaction. One thing that is already clear from existing materials is that "the boater and their crew is in charge", so I have no doubt at all that if a volunteer lock keeper winds a paddle, and the crew then instruct them to drop it, they should do so without hesitation, irrespective of whether the perceived danger is minor or potentially very great. (Unless there are blindingly obvious reasons why it would make things worse - e.g. a person actually stuck in the paddle opening, who would be trapped in if the paddle were dropped).

I bet there wasn't an ill-positioned water point on the lock landing when the first picture was taken either! (We worked out when we worked down the flight the other day that stopping for a fill up would just about equal the time that some of the crew needed to go shopping - we were spot on with our estimation!)

Seems a shame that when they fixed up the other end of the lock a few months back they didn't give thwe whole thing a bit of a look over to see if anything else was about to giveup the ghost. Surely these are things that the much vaunted regular inspections should have identified as likely failures long before they became real ones.

Repeat to myself...... "Flamingo already has far too much stuff in it" "Flamingo already has far too much stuff in it" "Flamingo already has far too much stuff in it" ..............................

Can you explain that remark in the light of the question I actually asked for an opinion on? I thought I had been remarkably calm and considered, in the circumstances.

I haven't seen any suggestion by anybody else who has posted in the thread that I have ranted at all, (although many have suggested I would have been reasonable to do so at the time). Nobody has at any point suggested I or any member of my crew did anything wrong at all, nor suggested how the incident might have been avoided. From my view our operation was "text book", and what happened could not be predicted. I can only assume that as a local you have a fair idea who the volunteer was, and are defending how he acted when told of the danger. He opened the paddle, and should have dropped it immediately as soon as it was apparent the boat (and those on board) were in danger, and certainly immediately he was told to do so. End of. This isn't meant to be a cheap jibe, but perhaps if you regularly took your full length historic boats anywhere rather than have them more or less permanently moored outside your premises, you might find you start to have the occasional scary moment as well ? Shit happens, but someone volunteering in this role should make the safety of boaters his priority.

Actually I think that is a BW sign that has been "rebranded"...... CRT would still be on their 3rd round of meetings trying to finalise an exact wording, before passing it to their legal team to check whether they are allowed to erect it.

Yes, but I'm on a boat without a printer, and no access to any software that allows me to edit a PDF document.......... If they would only provide documents that people might be able to edit end email to them, but they don't seem to think these things through......

It isn't really a choice if you have a boat that is 71' 6" long in a lock that has barely enough space between the bottom gates and the top end cill for it to fit. It's an optional behaviour if your boat is 30, 40, 50 or even 60 feet long, but once it significantly exceeds 70 feet, it is the only way you can realistically do things, unless you want to be involved in regular "cillings".

Normally accepted "good practice" when working a nominally 71' 6" through locks like these is to raise the fender out of use onto the deck, so that the metal stem of the boat is in contact with the gate, and should slide freely down it. The stems of working boats are usually to a design that freely allows and anticipates this, (though I accept Pete Harrison's point that he has been involved in "hangs" with a GUCCC Northwich stem). Leaving the fender deployed introduces many other risks, not the least of which are that they regularly get caught on the many projections that modern gates often have, and also you end up with the back end maybe 6" closer to the cill than it needs be. (In fact were the button down you would struggle to get the gates open without reversing tight against the cill in some locks). The lock-keeper didn't question that the fender was "up" and seemed to realise it is normal practice to let the metal stem slide down the gates.

This has been an "interesting" day, where this has not been the only incident. On a more positive note, (and somewhat amazingly given how long it takes to stop), I did manage to not hit the "Ashby" hire boat that came around a blind bend on completely the wrong side. Additionally Cath has just poured me a very large glass of wine, which she immediately overturned as she tried to put it on the table, and most of it went into my open laptop bag, soaking magazines and paper-work inside. The fact she just told me "I didn't do it deliberately!" has cheered me greatly - had it been deliberate after that day we have just had, I might not be able to laugh about it!

Shortly after starting today's boating had us descending the Hillmorton paired locks in "Flamingo". Apart from the not unusual particularly low pound between the top pairs of locks, the first two locks were fine. At the bottom pair we took the lock on the non-towpath side, where a volunteer lock keeper was in attendance. He drew one of the bottom paddles on these fast emptying locks, and Cath had yet to draw the other, when it became very obvious that whilst the back end of "Flamingo" was going down, the front end was hung up on something. Cath who was on the other side called across to the lock-keeper saying "the boat is hung - drop the paddle!", but he replied "No it is all-right". Cath repeated "Drop the paddle - the boat is hung", but he said "No it is all-right, it will sort itself out". By now the counter was in danger of being submerged, and the boat on a very downhill slant with the water fast disappearing beneath it. By now an alarmed David who had been with Odin the dog inside appeared and yelled very VERY forcibly to drop the paddle, but fortunately David was able to sprint to the top end of the lock, and draw the paddles long before the lock-keeper had managed to wind down the bottom paddle. The turbulence caused by David drawing the paddles caused the boat to fall, but then cannon up and down the lock on the massive wave caused by it falling down to the water. The rudder was repeatedly cilled and lifted from its pintel. Once the lock was refilled we tried again, and exactly the same started to happen. This time the paddle was dropped leaving the boat hung long enough for me to climb off, to see what was causing it. The stem of Flamingo was wedged to the left of a large nut on the rubbing plate of the left hand gate, jamming the boat against the wall. As we started to refill the lock you could see the stem start to slip past the bolt, before it fell free. We agreed with the lock keeper that I would hold the stem to the other side of the offending nut, and monitor closely as he emptied the lock very slowly. By the third attempt we completed the descent, but the dog was now so terrified he would not get back on the boat. I would first stress that the volunteer lock keeper was polite throughout, but just kept sticking to the line that in several years he had not seen it happen before. He seemed to interpret that as that because he had never seen it happen before, it couldn't possibly be happening now. Of course things do sometimes go wrong, and we have had incidents in the past with no third party involved, but my concern here is that ultimately we are responsible for the safety of "Flamingo" and those on board, and the volunteer lock keeper initially refused to accept Cath's requests to drop the paddle that he had raised. I think had David not been there things might well have developed to a sinking. So what do people think we should do,please ? Do we just accept this as an unfortunate set of circumstances, or do we report the near miss to CRT, explaining that the volunteer locky had become convinced "it would sort itself out". It was seriously scary, though , and for me more so, because we did everything by the book, and it was certainly not due to us getting anything wrong.

Yeah but with 1.5 million and enough to buy another 20-ish boats I could have my own mooring for all of them.

This does not appear to have been the situation for a lot of time since we took up a berth last November, though. I'm genuinely surprised by the turnover of boats - lots of levers and several new arrivals. I can't see any obvious reason for this volatility. We never intended to be there a long while, but it suits us quite well at the moment. It is in a lovely area, but certainly there is a need to spend some money there. If nothing else pontoons like the one we are on wobble very alarmingly, and really don;t feel that safe. I would be very interested to know how much they pay CRT, and whether they pay only on occupied berths, or for empty ones as well. (Not that I have 1,5 million.............)

Yes, We moor there, but believe a sale to new owners has been agreed for some months. New owners plan to continue the current business. No idea why it shows as still for sale though.

, ^^^^^^ Exactly this! We have had several boats speed past our moorings in recent weeks, engines buzzing, and apparently barely slowed down, that have proudly been displaying a prominent set of those magnetic roundels. Now in practice we are quite used to it, and, other than a bit of rocking, the speeders seldom cause much bother. But I'm amazed by the hypocrisy of those who can't even be bothered to peel them off before doing the exact opposite to what they are displaying. Actually the word I'm looking for might be stupidity rather than hypocrisy!

Probably much easier to get running quiet enough to satisfy you than that semi-diesel!

Stating the obvious, but Braidbar are only boat fitters. They may choose whose steel shells to offer, but they don't actually build them. Unless you measure up all aspects of a boat, just (for example) comparing cabin heights is pretty meaningless. Some boats have shallow hulls, and hence need taller cabins, those with deeper hulls can provide dsame headroom but cabin top is shallower. assuming similar ballasting, both may well have similar "air draughts", but each may look very different. I would not have thought any of the well recognised shell builders of any quality particularly likely to build something too tall or wide. Mostly a modern shell, similarly ballasted, will fit under similar arches to those from competing builders. Only when the boat differs wildly from a norm will it normally become that significant, I would say.

Several of the very low railway bridges on the Lee & Stort, depending on levels on the day (Sometimes, depending very much on levels) the bridge below the staircase at Brades on the BCN. If you are wide across the roof then Ashtead tunnel (BCN) can result in paint being lost of grab rails. I can't imagine many modern boats have serious issues in Harecastle though, other points on the T&M are far lower. Surprisingly Froghall is a bit exaggerated, both in people's recollections, and on the gauges to let you know if you will pass it. Our old boat "Chalice" had a much taller cabin than many, and was very "front end high", but we still made it, albeit with some loss of paint. Details here. I have never noted Aqualines as being excessively tall. "Tallness" is not the only factor - if the cabin sides do not have enough "tumble-home", (i.e don't lean in heavily to make the roof a lot narrower than the boat), then the corners may be the problem in arched structures like tunnels, rather than overall height. The Chines built "East west" boats are particularly bad in this respect, and "barge style" narrowboats may also be similar.

But why is the forum just showing it as text like "Posted image" rather than the image? I don't think the problem I'm seeing is unique to Photobucket. If I find one that isn't I'll add to this thread.

Looking at posts like this one, I'm increasingly finding that whilst others can apparently see the embedded image, but I can not. In this case it open up as if it will display, but I get a continuous "egg timer" but no image. In this case the underlying image is in Photobucket, but I can see other Photobucket hosted images, (including my own) perfectly OK. Can anybody explain what my problem might be, and how I solve it, please? Winows 7 Firefox Full version of forum software. EDIT: Damn - now I have linked to it, I can see the image, but I can't if I go directly to the original posting. How VERY odd!