Its not all plain sailing on canals

Celebrating the return. Ships cat - Dash - off on a banyan


During my overnight stay at Keadby I met a very nice chap on the boat next to me. He was not a happy bunny. During the recent cold spell the canal at Keadby was frozen over. He was moored up and generally minding his own business waiting for the thaw. Then a British Waterways dredger came along breaking the ice as it went. The ice was about 2 to 3 inches thick and was forced under his boat and lifted it up as it went resulting to damage to the propeller and bending the rudder. The tiller is now at right angles to the rudder and unusable.

The dredger was very unsympathetic and the response was ‘Its not my problem’. The BW reacted like any big company and are slow to react to the mishap and no help it seems.

The usual routine. Being passed from one department to another or the manager is away and the person you want is out of the office at the moment.

Meanwhile he is stuck at Keadby and unable to get his boat moving back to his base in the midlands. Spitting feathers as a description of his feelings is putting it mildly.

He is down to a search for wood to keep the fire going now.

When I left Keadby at 0700 exactly I left a number of my logs with him to tide him over for a few days. The lockkeeper (not Mark) was very punctual in his arrival and passed me out very efficiently on to the low tide. This soon had me shooting along at 9 mph and as time went by it invariably dropped to 7.
The Trent was a mill pond compared to yesterday.

Arrived at Torksey after a trouble free trip and handed over the pack about the Ancholme that was given to me at Ferriby. As the Ancholme is run by the Environmental Agency there is little contact between the lockkeepers and subsequently British Waterways people don’t have the gossip to pass on.

I had tried to find out some information on the internet about moorings etc but all I could come up with was bits on the caravan park and a piece written a couple of years ago by someone who had been up to Brandy Wharf with a 60 foot boat and had to reverse back to the lock to wind.

Moored at Saxilby at 1230. I now need to get rid of the car and put the motor bike onto the bows. Life should be easier then without the need to continually get back to the car to move it.



If you get an unintelligable email from me it is not my fault - honest