Canal Cruising in the High Season

I have been moving about on the boat, to go to a VHF Radio Operators course in Kenilworth, and (now) heading down towards London for final testing for the Extreme Everest trip. This is the cruising log entry I made yesterday (Saturday, 11 August 2007).

Started off with all the locks giving off mist. Initially my boat was on its own, and what (little) traffic I met was going the opposite way to me so things worked out very well. The only fly in the ointment was on the second lock where a hire boat saw I was in the next lock, but closed the gate on me; which in turn meant water flowed into the lock; their boat stopped very close to the lock and I was forced to do some heavy manoevering. In the process I lost my lower front fender, and broke the chain on the upper fender. (I also found, when I eventually stopped, that most of the books had come off the bookshelves). Got to the staircase, and learnt that in a broad staircase, you can take two boats up and one down (or vice versa) simultaneously. At the next lock the boat that had been behind me caught up, arriving at the lock as I left, so I waited for them at the next lock, and did that, plus the Stockton flight with them. The meant that we did that flight very quickly, as they had three crew, and were an experienced live aboard. Beyond Stockton, there was a live aboard reversing, so I stopped for them and went aground in the process. It took me quite a while to get off, and at that point I started encountering a lot of traffic. Arrived at the bottom of Calcutt locks at 11:30 which I thought was very good going. However this is where the trouble started. There were a couple of boats going up in front of me, with a little traffic coming the opposite way. As I entered the first lock I was joined by a wooden cruiser, who understanderbly was concerned about the movement of the two boats. However, the other thing they brought to the party (one male, one female, and one child) was nary a gorm between them They were hopeless, and I ended up doing these locks considerably slower than I can do on my own. Anyway, proceeded down to the junction, where I found my klaxon was kaput, and onto the shared section of the Oxford and Grand Union. There was a boat going across the junction as I got there, so I ended up in a procession of three - bad enough. However, the real problem was the level of traffic on this section - between the junction and the first bridge (a distance of less than 1/2 mile); I met 13 boats coming in the opposite direction! This decided me to moor up for the day, though I had intended to carry on to Braunston or thereabouts.