Wheltonfield

Here I am Rune

Distance 4.5 miles

Total 502 Locks 13 Tunnels

Running total mileage 696.5 miles

Well I supposed it had to happen, after nearly 700 miles and 500 locks I manage to make the ‘schoolboy error’ of getting the back of the boat caught in one of Watford Locks. Since this can rapidly lead to a sinking I actually got off quite lightly with the rudder being ‘popped’ out of the bearing on the skeg (the metal bit under water that it sits on) and fracturing the rudder stock bearing and holder. In my defence, the locks at Watford do seem to be very short although when we passed this way going up there was a 70’ boat going through the locks, he did have to push his bows right up against the gates though. It is something that can happen quite quickly and in my case the boat had drifted back a few feet whilst waiting for the lock to begin to drain. I only caught the very tip of the rudder on the cill at the rear and it was the bearing breaking that released us, if you actually put the skeg on the cill it can cause a lot more damage, possibly to both propeller and prop shaft.

 This will be a fairly expensive error to correct, I’m expecting to pay something in the order of £450 to fix my error, on the other side however I have contacted the insurers and they state that this sort of cock-up is covered on their policies so, with an excess of £250 I’m hoping that is all that I will end up having to pay. The biggest expense of this little episode is the fact that the boat has to be taken out of the water to repair it at a cost of £252. This will be a big incentive to try to ensure that it doesn’t happen again!

The damage caused, (the bearing is supposed to be flush with the mount)

The damaged rudder (most is supposed to be underwater!)