have you ever had one of those heart stopping moments

[AKULA]

i did sunday i nearley harpooned a very smart working boat just outside chester sun aft.

there i was sailing along quite nicley came round a bend and whoosh hit buy the wind straight for this boat.

even now i dont know how i missed it id be liying if i said it dint frighten the living daylights out of me .

[stort_mark]

No.

[alan_fincher]

No.

No, me neither.

 

But then I don't boat on the same waterways as Phylis !

[Nickhlx]

No, me neither.

 

But then I don't boat on the same waterways as Phylis !

 

 

Naughty !

 

Nick

[denboy]

Yes yesterday when what i thought was a goose turned out to be a swimmer in full wetsuit .think he got the point when he head butted the bow

[Naughty Cal]

No, me neither.

 

But then I don't boat on the same waterways as Phylis !

 

Whatever do you mean. Have never hit another boat, inanimate objects yes, but not other boats.

 

Same in the car, have never hit another car, now the bay window of the house.....................................

[Chertsey]

Has anyone, ever, actually crushed or holed a wooden or plastic boat with their steel (or iron!) one? I reckon I'm far more scared of them than they are of me.

 

(perhaps there should be a facility for anonymous replies in certain circumstances!)

[FadeToScarlet]

Yes, when my boat ended up being knocked over 30-40 degrees onto its side, with the low-level vents getting closer to the water, when it hit Fotheringay Bridge. That was pretty heart-stopping.

[carlt]

Has anyone, ever, actually crushed or holed a wooden or plastic boat with their steel (or iron!) one? I reckon I'm far more scared of them than they are of me.

I had a plank snapped by a Challenger boat, once and a Willow Wren hen party boat crushed my wood/canvas canoe (WW's response: "Prove it!").

 

The Challenger guy was so nice about it that we settled the issue, in the pub, by me getting very drunk indeed, at his expense.

[alan_fincher]

Has anyone, ever, actually crushed or holed a wooden or plastic boat with their steel (or iron!) one? I reckon I'm far more scared of them than they are of me.

 

(perhaps there should be a facility for anonymous replies in certain circumstances!)

No, but years ago if one (or more) had entered a double lock before he did, my brother used to have a technique for bringing his Big Woolwich in where he never even rubbed them, but absolutely guaranteed that he was able to lock through the next one alone.

 

"You seem to be in a hurry - we were about to stop for lunch anyway" (at 10:00 am, sometimes )

 

I can't condone intimidating small boats with large, but provided you can catch the buggers, it's easy to do )

 

Our Thames games seemed to come down to how many of those "dangly testicles" we could cause to get deployed when the owners of "plastic" that had raced ahead of us between locks then realised the lock keepers were going to allow us to follow swiftly into the locks behind them. Many seemed more than capable of damaging themselves, without us needing to get implicated in the process, though.

[blackelle123]

We had another NB bump into us bow to bow. Apparently he said his reverse failed and he needed to stop so he used us!!!. The contents of my kitchen ended up on the floor and he never even said sorry. For a couple of seconds I thought the worse!

[Naughty Cal]

Our Thames games seemed to come down to how many of those "dangly testicles" we could cause to get deployed when the owners of "plastic" that had raced ahead of us between locks then realised the lock keepers were going to allow us to follow swiftly into the locks behind them. Many seemed more than capable of damaging themselves, without us needing to get implicated in the process, though.

 

Another good excuse for leaving them down. f*ck good seamanship, its the lack of damage to the gel coat im bothered about.

[BlueStringPudding]

We got hit bow-to-bow en route to the Ashby last summer, when a boat came round the corner really fast and we had moored boats either side of us. That was one hell of a jolt and not much fun.

 

Same week, same holiday, a Willow Wren hire boat came zooming through a bridge on a corner, hit moored boats, bounced off them, hit us, bounced off us, and hit a third boat. They couldn't give a toss. We phoned Willow Wren but they couldn't give a monkeys either.

[bristol & argo]

snip-

Our Thames games seemed to come down to how many of those "dangly testicles" we could cause to get deployed when the owners of "plastic" that had raced ahead of us between locks then realised the lock keepers were going to allow us to follow swiftly into the locks behind them. Many seemed more than capable of damaging themselves, without us needing to get implicated in the process, though.

ahh the Thames - some of those keepers are jokers...

 

on one (going down hill) the keeper says to a rowing skiff containing Mr LaDiDa and his date - go right up to the gates you'll be fine there...

 

... and then he sent us in behind them , oh of course Mr LaDiDa was on the lock side with the ropes leaving his date to decend scared into the depths of the lock between a slimy dripping gate and a pair of Woolwich bows!!!

 

The only time we've made contact with a shiny white thing in a Thames lock we were still securely tied,

The locky had guided us in and squeezed us up to about 8 inches from him, unfortunately he set off with his wheel hard over and collected a bitumen streak on his bathing platform..

Having roared off, half a mile further along he was moored up rubbing away at it....

 

 

Simon.

[carlt]

half a mile further along he was moored up rubbing away at it....

Sometimes the excitement of boating can be overwhelming.

 

 

Coat!!!!!!!!

[David Schweizer]

Has anyone, ever, actually crushed or holed a wooden or plastic boat with their steel (or iron!) one? I reckon I'm far more scared of them than they are of me.

 

(perhaps there should be a facility for anonymous replies in certain circumstances!)

Not personally, but back in the 1960's, I did witness a full laden narrowboat cutting throgh the ice above Uxbridge lock, slice a moored fibreglass cruiser in half, it sank within a few seconds.

[Charlie4472]

Has anyone, ever, actually crushed or holed a wooden or plastic boat with their steel (or iron!) one?

 

A very long time ago on my first hire boat holiday at the age of about 17 I managed to get a large cracking sound out of a plastic boat in Blisworth Tunnel. I bounced the Union Canal Carriers boat "Edgware " off the tunnel wall just as he was coming passed in the other direction. There was rather a lot of swearing from the other boat but I didn't hear any more about it. Still don't like tunnels much though and this happened about 35 years ago.

[PeterG]

Last week I got rammed by a private boat very hard when I was taking my shiny new boat from the builders to my mooring. It hit me on the stern near one of the cleats (painful) and then took my paint off back too the bare metal.

 

To say I was not best pleased by this was very much true!

 

When they hit me I was waiting in a double lock for them to join me and share the lock, I still have no idea how they got it so wrong.

 

By the way I do not class myself as part of the shiny boat brigade as I prefer to use it rather than polish it, even though I now have a very shiny boat apart from certain patches of very expensive bare metal which need to be sorted.

[Naughty Cal]

Has anyone, ever, actually crushed or holed a wooden or plastic boat with their steel (or iron!) one? I reckon I'm far more scared of them than they are of me.

 

(perhaps there should be a facility for anonymous replies in certain circumstances!)

 

Seems to be that the answer to your question is for the majority no, they prefer to hit steel boats

[furnessvale]

Has anyone, ever, actually crushed or holed a wooden or plastic boat with their steel (or iron!) one?

 

I never touched him honest, BUT just south of Stoke on Trent there is a newish concrete bridge next to a council refuse station. The bridge is wide enough for boats to pass. I was more than halfway through when a plastic boat approached from the south. I gave him all the room he needed but he panicked and swung over on the approach to the bridge striking a concrete edge which sticks out at right angles about a foot above water level.

 

One hell of a cloud of white dust went up and I don't think it was concrete! At least he wouldn't be running with a bow wave for a bit.

 

George ex nb Alton retired

[Liam]

I can't remember who, at the moment, but I know somebody who saw a 'rowing 8' coming down a straight stretch at speed, and after moving over and slowing down, the rowing 8 continued straight down the middle at speed and pretty much rammed the boat.

 

The boat carried on whilst the rowers shot over to the off side, rammed the bank and the whole thing split in half. Do they have hinges? If not it is now two sets of 4!

 

Oh and the Cox got very wet.

[FadeToScarlet]

I can't remember who, at the moment, but I know somebody who saw a 'rowing 8' coming down a straight stretch at speed, and after moving over and slowing down, the rowing 8 continued straight down the middle at speed and pretty much rammed the boat.

 

In all likelihood, the cox couldn't actually see you. They're at the back of a 60' carbon fibre missile, and all you can see is the chest of the strokeman ahead, with a 30 degree or so blind spot dead ahead.

 

 

The boat carried on whilst the rowers shot over to the off side, rammed the bank and the whole thing split in half. Do they have hinges? If not it is now two sets of 4!

 

Oh and the Cox got very wet.

 

They don't have hinges, but they do split in half. There's a vertical bulkhead on each end, and the two halves attach together with bolts. They split in two so you can put them on a trailer- a 60' long trailer isn't possible in Europe.

 

Chances are, if it actually came into two pieces, it's completely written off and so they'll have to spend 4-15k buying another one...

[PeterScott]

Steering 70' hireboat downriver on the Weaver in the impossibly dry summer of 1976: about to make a wide turn into the Anderton Lift; cassions still would up and down on bits of string in those days. Looking around at the high buildings thereabouts ... then one of the high buildings was bearing down on us - with a very high and very sharp pointy-end. And a bow wave. Changed course to other side of the river towards a high wharf wall. Sunbathing-on-roof-crew started screaming and running for cover, or the river, or anything but the wall or the bearing-down-pointiness.

 

Oncoming Irish Tanker: "hoot hoot hoot", as in "you are an idiot and I am trying to stop before I cut you in half". Reverted to original course and allowed aforesaid heart to thump slightly less violently while being pulled upwards on those strings. All over in half a minute; still stuff-of-nightmares, though.

[FORTUNATA]

Given the reality I'm not the most co-ordinated helmsman (prone to occasional sheer panic as a beginner) I was thinking about a very simple way around the problem. I figure that careful and calculated use of motorcycle tyres in all key areas of the hull would make a boat virtually bullet proof. Normally fenders aren't totally effective as they don't always cover specific areas of impact.

I've already used car tyres to save my skin on my fibreglass boat but feel smaller motorcycle tyres would be closer to traditional fenders. Most likely points of impact would be the bow or stern.

[Naughty Cal]

I've already used car tyres to save my skin on my fibreglass boat but feel smaller motorcycle tyres would be closer to traditional fenders. Most likely points of impact would be the bow or stern.

 

We thought that but it turns out our most likely point of impact is the nav gear