How things can go wrong

[Wanderer Vagabond]

Just to widen this thread of how things can go wrong (no longer related to engine malfunction) I thought I'd share a recent experience whilst bringing our boat up the Calder and Hebble. I know someone is going to say that it's my own fault for doing it in a 60 foot boat but ignoring that, we had an 'interesting' experience in the Shepley Bridge lock that caught me out, as one who thought I knew what I was doing.

There were a number of issues with this lock,both top and bottom gates leak like a pig and only one of the top ground paddles(Calder and Hebble handspike) is working. added to that as a 'long' boat in a short lock with these d*mn walkways on the inside of the bottom gates there was always the danger of getting caught under one as the lock level rises. I thought that I had all these bases covered so the crew started to fill the lock with the available means (lightly opened gate paddles and the one ground paddle opened). The problem I had arose because of the leaking gates pushing my boat back onto the bottom gate. I tried to hold it off with the boatpole but wasn't able to do so. I was aware of number of bolt heads protruding through the bottom gate so was keen to keep these away from getting caught on the rear deck, my oversight was that I overlooked the fact that the welded overlap on the dexter plate stuck out further at the back below the waterline than the rubbing strakes. After a few moments of trying to fill the badly leaking lock, it became apparent to me that the back of the boat was no longer rising (whilst the front continued to go up). This resulted in a bit of a panicked shout to 'shut everything down' whilst I try to find out why we aren't rising. By this time it was impossible to either push the boat away from the bottom gate or force it away under engine power. The solution was to walk along the gunwales to the front of the boat and using it as a 60 foot lever, push the bow across the lock, this dislodged the stern which then popped up about 6 inches as it freed. On the plus side, the main reason that this mishap didn't result in a sinking was because, due to the leaking bottom gates, the lock itself was filling so slowly, had it been filling faster it is unlikely that my crew could have shut everything down fast enough to prevent flooding the engine.

The moral is obviously to watch absolutely everything whilst operating a lock and don't get distracted by anyone. I believe that a former poster on here, Maffi, had a similar experience with his boat when the bow weld on the base plate caught on the cill of a lock whilst he was filling it. Even when you think you know what you are doing, things can go wrong very quickly.

Edited September 29, 2017 by Wanderer Vagabond