Warning about locks with a bypass culvert on the lower landing, caught me out.

[cheesegas]

Was coming down the Hanwell flight a couple of weeks ago and finished the bottom lock and moored up on the lower landing to close the gates. Nothing untoward, perfectly still water as you'd expect. There was a fisherman with all his crap spread out on the landing, who I'd asked to move but instead he just bunched up to the end of the landing so I tied up with the centre line. 

 

As I closed the bottom gate, someone on a boat coming down the second to last lock asked for a hand with their bottom gates as the top ones were leaking too much. This was a real struggle, it took four people to open them and a lot of flushing the top paddles to make sure they were clear as there was a lot of weed. I got back to my boat and found it heeled over alarmingly, with water rushing from a culvert forcing itself into the exhaust and the vents in the side of the boat, which are just below the gunnels, far from the waterline!

 

Turns out the short pound between the second to last and last lock has a bypass culvert which exits right in the middle of the last lock's bottom landing. When I moored up, the pound wasn't high enough to overflow via the culvert, but all that flushing of the paddles had filled the pound enough that it was running very very strong!

 

I undid the centre line and jumped on, and the boat was immediately pinned to the opposite bank. Whilst in this precarious but safe state, I cracked the injectors to make sure the engine wasn't hydrolocked after which it started reluctantly as the silencer was full of water. As the boat was heeled over by the force of the water from the culvert, the central bilge pump under the propshaft wasn't able to do anything as all the water was on one side. Once the boat righted itself, the pump ran for a good 10 minutes to clear the water...

 

A little scary, and I'll now be leaning over the bank when I stop on a lower lock landing to make sure there's no culverts there. 

[midnight cowboy]

Shouldn’t you suggest put a warning sign board where this happens??

Just now, midnight cowboy said:

Shouldn’t you suggest put a warning sign board where this happens??

*CaRT* missing!!

[cheesegas]

4 minutes ago, midnight cowboy said:

Shouldn’t you suggest put a warning sign board where this happens??

*CaRT* missing!!

I did tell the volunteer lock keepers who just said something along the lines of  ‘yeah that happens if you tie up there, didn’t you know?’. Should really drop CaRT an email and mention the sign and attitude of the lock keepers, I’ll do it this evening. 

[IanD]

26 minutes ago, cheesegas said:

I did tell the volunteer lock keepers who just said something along the lines of  ‘yeah that happens if you tie up there, didn’t you know?’. Should really drop CaRT an email and mention the sign and attitude of the lock keepers, I’ll do it this evening. 

I know one of the Hanwell volockies (who probably wasn't there that day -- what day of the week was it?), I'll ask him about it when I see him tomorrow.