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Enter a key word to search for posts:Nerve-racking
Posted on: Saturday August 19, 2017 at: 4:08 pm
Brandy Pad is, of course, a narrowboat designed for use on the canals. Now, canals are man-made and designed to be level. They are, in essence, long ditches between locks. The locks are how you change level up and down. There is a weak flow because the water from the top has to feed down to the rest of the canal to fill it, but once the levels are established, there is no great need for water to flow (except when locks are emptied of course, but that is a relatively small amount.)
So, narrowboats –originally barges – did not need to be deep with keels for stability. In fact they are completely flat on the bottom. A long, steel tube basically, with a propeller and a rudder at the stern. This means they do not really handle very well, but whilst on the canals they are inherently stable with ballast in the bilge to keep them upright. They do, however, rock easily – every time you move about for instance. That is actually one of the fun attractions of them.
Rivers and particularly tidal rivers are a whole other matter. Water flows down rivers, sometimes at quite a pace. On a tidal river water flows up AND down at quite a pace at different times of the day. This fast moving water on a wide river, like the Ouse, forms Oxbow bends, where the water on the inside of the bend slows down and dumps sediment resulting is shallow water. On the outside of the bend there is plenty of water usually, but travelling at a very fast pace.
On top of this, rivers tend to be exposed places with a lot of wind, swirling eddies, logs – no, TREES – sometimes flowing along with the current. Strangely, such logs seem to get attracted to boats for some reason and require navigating around.
So, taking a narrowboat out onto a tidal river involves a fair degree of risk and certainly a lot of stress. We don’t bother wearing PFDs (personal floatation devices – in other words, life-jackets) when we are travelling on canals, but we sure as hell do on rivers. Corners can result in a worrying amount of tilting of the boat when it gets caught by both wind and current. To be honest, it is more than a little frightening and it is not something we do lightly, but it is necessary if we are going to achieve our ambition of travelling as much of the UK canals and waterways as we can. When we came off the Ouse and back onto a canal on Wednesday it was with a profound sense of relief. We normally travel between about 2.5 – 4 mph on canals, but we hit 8mph coming back up the Ouse from Barmby junction to Selby. To enter a lock from a fast flowing river, it is necessary to turn around and approach against the flow. This gives you more control, but can be difficult. On Wednesday by the time we had completed the turn, we were about 200 yards further along the river from the lock and had to fight our way back. Even the turning is challenging as you lose a lot of steerage when there is no flow over the rudder and end up just going sideways. I will know to start our turn sooner next time – we still have to tackle the tidal River Trent in order to get to places such as Chesterfield, Lincoln and Boston. That, however, is for another day and after we have had time to recover.
Rough water
Whew…..you must have had enough excitement that day to last you for a while…what a relief to be back on a placid canal water again, how is the whisky bottle looking…depleted ? canal boating is supposed to be calm and restful and heres hoping your anniversary cruise will be, lotsand lots of love, xxxxx