Who weilds the windlass?

[boatyboy]

It's the other way around on our boat.We have been going along solid for 3 years now.And done nearly 4 thousand locks.My wife takes the boat into the lock all the time, and hardly ever hits the sides or the end gates.I think i can count the amount of locks i've taken the boat into on one hand,at least six times.

Dave

Edited June 24, 2011 by boatyboy

[Chalky]

With us it's the children who operate the locks with mum supervising. They get quite put out if one of the adults tries to help them.

[Morat]

It's weird isn't it. My wife would rather wind locks, she sometimes does steer but not very often and does get quite worried by it despite being an excellent driver with great eyesight and good coordination. I'm more than happy to wind, but I don't get the opportunity very often.

[Ray T]

Just been to the top of Hatton Flight and back.

 

Mrs T did 'em on the way up, I did them on the way down on the assumption that going down hill is easier!

 

It is on a bicycle - not on a narrow boat.

 

The others we shared 50 - 50.

[muddywaters]

Well it is me at the tiller the whole time we are on a boat and not just at locks.

Simply because the OH has no confidence steering no matter if it is going into a lock or on a long straight stretch of canal.

Trying to persuade her to have a go but she won't says she is scared of hitting something.

The only time she was ever confident at the tiller was in a staircase lock and I took it in the bottom lock before climbing up the ladder to work the lock.

[keble]

Just done the Avon ring. 90+% of windlass weilders were lasses.

swmbo won't learn to drive (yet) so until then that's our division of labour - easy!

[fee666]

well i do most of the locks as i dont like being in the locks,

but if on a flight we share so i will set the lock and start it and he will finish that lock whilst i go on to start the next one, once he has closed the gates the next one is ready for him this works very well for us because it can be a bit lonely on the back of the boat on your own.

[Graham Davis]

We seem to share them out, fairly evenly, so we will often do a couple each in a flight and change over as the boat finds a level.

[carlt]

We both did the locks.

 

The boat looked after itself, in the lock.

[RLWP]

We both did the locks.

 

The boat looked after itself, in the lock.

 

Proper length boats do

 

Richard

[carlt]

Proper length boats do

 

Richard

My 30' Walton boat did, too.

 

Decent length ropes, fore and aft (no wobbling about on centre lines) and engine in forward tickover and the boat will behave itself.

[Jeanie920]

I steer the boat and my OH does the locks.

We are new to narrowboating and had decided that we would do 50/50 but he seems to prefer doing the locks and I prefer to do the steering.

[Smelly]

We're 50/50 on big flights although funnily if there're no locks about muggins gets the lion's share of the steering.

 

Full marks for El Gato; NoH gets the locks AND the complicated steery bits... that's luurrrve that is!

[Ange]

I don't steer ...

 

We both do the locks - on a flight I go ahead setting the locks and Dave takes the boat through single handed. In single locks we do them together - the boat doesn't need someone stood at the tiller the whole time.

 

And Dave knows that if he ever shouted instructions at me there'd be a brand new "body in the canal" thread

 

[mrsmelly]

We have just returned to our home mooring at Cropredy and, as we had agreed that I would operate the 18 locks from Wigram's Turn, I couldn't help noticing that I was in a very small minority. We met other boats at every lock (there was a queue of seven boats at Marston Doles waiting to come down Napton Locks) and in every case bar one (where I think there may have been an all male crew), it was the female member of the crew that came along, windlass in hand, to work the lock while her male counterpart remained aboard holding the tiller (and sometimes shouting inappropriate instructions) - was this a typical sample or is it just a peculiarity of boats on the Oxford Canal at this time?

 

No not just the Oxford its country wide as it should be, thats why we have women for locks, cooking, cleaning ironing etc how else would we go on ? My missus is finding it hard at the moment we have been up on the commercial big old waterways system in Yorkshire for the past few weeks and turning the key on the control panel and pressing the buttons is a tad tiresome

[Windfola]

I wrote quite a long response to this thread an hour or so ago, but then my internet connection crashed before I could post it.

 

 

 

That is possibly just as well.

 

 

Put it this way, when I get my boat there'll only be one Helmsperson and that will be me.

[RLWP]

I wrote quite a long response to this thread an hour or so ago, but then my internet connection crashed before I could post it.

 

 

 

That is possibly just as well.

 

 

Put it this way, when I get my boat there'll only be one Helmsperson and that will be me.

 

Who is going to do the locks for you then?

 

Richard

[Windfola]

er, the annoying part is that that is going to be me as well!

[RLWP]

er, the annoying part is that that is going to be me as well!

 

It was looking like such a good plan too...

 

 

Richard

[Windfola]

It was looking like such a good plan too...

 

 

Richard

 

That's where my plan for aloof femaledom goes awry. I may of course decide to accept help from kind people at locks...

[RLWP]

Come on, get yer glad rags on and a bit of slap and land yerself a bloke to do the locks for you. Male boaters are a pushover for female company

 

Richard

 

As long as you can stand the beards...

[journeyperson]

My wife can do it with her eyes shut:

 

 

I wish she wouldn't though!

Edited June 24, 2011 by journeyperson

[headjog]

They say ignorance is bliss, & I reckon that's true.

Out of necessity, I volunteered to bring our 50 foot boat back to the Midlands from Nantwich, having not steered or worked a lock for over 18years ( and then, I never steered into a lock)

 

After, help through the first two, we - may friend & I-were abandoned to our fate.

Then came the baptism by flood. I managed to pinball us through the 9 locks at Audlem, plus the 5 in front and the 2 behind, in the worst torrential rain & water run-off, I've seen in years-without sinking us. We arrived back eventually,with a few battle scars in the paintwork but no dents. I found keeping said boat between the two cill markers a doddle, and getting in, in calm weather, a walk in the park after that.

 

However, now I'm slightly less ignorant, as a result of the posts I read on here regarding hanging off gates,getting wedged cross-wise,caught up on submerged ironwork,& scraping along in silted up channels, that my nerve has buggered orf,along with my 'Oh well, what's the worst that can happen?' attitude, and so far I've managed to avoid all contact with tiller duty. The problem is that I DO struggle to move some of the paddles, and would be better placed driving it in. Crazy innit?

 

(Something like a 'persons of a yeller-belly disposition' warnings should be added to posts like those - then I could remain blissfully ignorant & smile at everyone sweetly as I continued to bumble around the system. )

[Québec]

As locks require the application of logical thought my wife has decided that I'm safer left to steer in, hopefully, relatively straight lines.

[alan_fincher]

Anyone who had tried the constant wresting match with Sickle's tiller, versus the comparatively low effort tasks of paddle winding and gate pushing, could assume Graham has got the original logic in this thread wrong........

 

But seriously - we make a point of taking turns, typically switching over after half a dozen locks, or a flight, but what you see may not always tell the true story.

 

For example, after I smashed my pelvis last year, within a few months I was perfectly capable of steering Chalice, (well as capable as I ever am! ), but had certainly been advised to stay away from the locks for a few more months.

 

On another occasion, when Cath had hospitalised herself by falling down stairs at work, we did't have to call off our planned trip, because she was able to still steer the boat, but couldn't possibly have been on lock duties.

 

If either partner only feels comfortable on the one task, and things like this occur, almost certainly you would then be forced not to go boating at all - unthinkable to us - we like the flexibility that being multi-skilled allows us.