Braunston

Here I am Rune

Distance 3.6 miles

Total 508 Locks 14 Tunnels

Running total mileage 700.1 miles

An interesting day if I may say so, we begin the day by finishing the repair to the damaged rudder. This answered the question of whether I would jump in the canal for £250, the answer was a clear yes. The question arose because just about everything that could go wrong with the repair, did! To replace the broken bearing it was necessary to remove the tiller arm ‘swan neck’, this had unfortunately been well painted and everything was seized on. The boat mechanic tried to free the nut holding it on and that then sheared off so he then had to drill out the old bolt and re-thread it for a new bolt to fit. Then the bearing itself was seized on and this needed to be cut off with a grinder and when all that was done we found that the actual rudder was bent so that had to be removed to heat it up and straighten it. This was the point of me jumping in the canal, the options were to either wait for several days whilst they repaired the boat slipway at the marina and then pay £550 for them to haul it out, repair it and then put it back in again or get into the canal and remove the rudder myself, I took the second option.  The eventual total cost was £243 so I still pay about what I was expecting but don’t have to put in an insurance claim.

Once back on the move we passed through Braunston tunnel with little drama, we bumped a boat going the other way but my view was that was his fault since I had moved our boat as far across as I could and he hadn’t done so, despite the ‘rubbing bar’ on the tunnel wall being on his side of the tunnel, no real damage done though he looked ‘daggers’ at me as we passed, I just wished him a good day.

The final drama was as we passed through the last locks into Braunston. We arrived at number 2 lock to find another boat already in the lock waiting to come up. They were travelling with another boat so they asked to wait for this boat to catch up, we were in no hurry so were quite content to do so. This boat however must have been some way down the canal however since we were waiting about 10 minutes for it, so long in fact that I went back to our boat to turn the engine off. Whilst I was walking back to the boat I heard a scream and a splash and the elderly woman from the boat already in the lock had fallen into the water just before the lower lock gate. Fortunately, on her husband’s insistence she was wearing an automatic lifejacket which had inflated, the problem however was how to get her out of the water without causing her any injury. Since she was in her 70’s just yanking her out (as you would with someone young and fit) would be likely to dislocate her shoulders and she wasn’t keen to be hauled out by a rope since that is what had been done last time she fell in (she seems to be a serial ‘faller-in’), and that had left her with bruised ribs. Referring back to my sailing tips, I got hold of the tarpaulin wrapped around the tandem and threw that into the canal which we then fed underneath her and the 4 of us who were there then just lifted her out onto the bankside as if in a stretcher, and fortunately uninjured. She was clearly quite shocked and took a while to calm herself down, was also sick a couple of times onto the tarpaulin!! Hopefully however no permanent harm done, showing the value of life-jackets for non-swimmers. We look forward to a less eventful day tomorrow!