Sailaway or Knacker?

[David Mack]

58 minutes ago, jetzi said:

Yup Upware lock makes Wicken Fen / Burwell / Reach all inaccessible for a full length boat. I'm going to give it a go but plan to do a "dry run" without the boat in it first, to see what happens with the auto-closing, then try with the boat and be very ready to get out of there if it looks like I'm going to get guillotined.

I've posted these pics of a full length boat in Upware Lock before. With the bow here...

the stern was here:

 

[jetzi]

Yep, that's how I know!

 

I think @ditchcrawler was asking "what about Upware" because you mentioned in this thread (over a year ago) that apart from Brandon and Lodes End a 70' boat can go anywhere in the south and midlands.

The reason I resurrected this thread is because I found "Lodes End lock" in a search and I wanted to ask about the length

[enigmatic]

You close the gate by pressing the button and the gate descending achingly slowly, just like any other Ouse guillotine. The autoreset happens 15 minutes after someone fully opens a gate, and I think can be emergency stopped

 

Would have thought 65' would be OK with the scope to go diagonal, and no need to worry about cills. I'd be more worried whether there's enough space at the winding hole at Wicken because it's not the sort of place you want to reverse out of

[ditchcrawler]

51 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

 

 

Would have thought 65' would be OK with the scope to go diagonal, and no need to worry about cills. I'd be more worried whether there's enough space at the winding hole at Wicken because it's not the sort of place you want to reverse out of

Its a T junction

[enigmatic]

...with a weedy non-navigable bit on an angle, yes. Probably fine, especially with little chance of hire boats mooring opposite it for the rest of the year, but it's a bit trickier to reverse out of if your boat is too big than the sluice!