Chester Town Centre

Here I am Rune

Distance 0.8 miles

Total 696 Locks 26 Tunnels

Running total mileage 1062.8 miles

Another short day’s travel but I can’t really call it uneventful. After we had watered up at the Wharf there was a hire boat coming through with a crew of about 6 heading towards the lock staircase. Not one to miss an opportunity to make the job easier I volunteered to double up with them through the locks, turned out it wasn’t such a good idea. They led into the first of the three locks but then drifted diagonally across the lock. Since they didn’t seem to be doing anything about it I gently nudged into the lock and pushed their boat across to the right hand side of the lock, so far so good. Their shore crew began to work the lock but with perhaps a little too much enthusiasm. Once the ground paddle had been fully opened my boat was ‘sucked’ towards the top gate and despite putting it into full reverse I couldn’t stop it. The bow button then became jammed in the gate and as the waters rose the bow first went down then the button retaining chains broke which released it but dropped the button down to water level hanging on the two remaining chains. This was now going to cause a problem in the next lock since without a functioning bow button it was likely that the bow itself might jam in the lock gate, and that would have led to a sinking.

The solution to this, suggested by the helm of the hire boat was to tie our stern bollards together which would then stop me going forward onto the gate as his boat was some 10 feet longer than ours. This was duly done and when the second lock had been drained into the our lock we began to move forward into the second lock of the staircase. Here things began to go seriously wrong as neither of us could get over the cill between the locks. I tried to reverse back into the lower lock but, being tied to his boat, had been dragged onto the cill by his boat and couldn’t get back. I called up for the crew to let some more water into the lock and whilst I was doing this, one of his crew was tinkering with the paddles on the gate below us. I called up to say don’t open that to which he replied, “It’s already open”. That had to be the worst possible news because it meant that whilst sitting on the cill the lock was draining and if we didn’t do something about it quickly we would both sink! The problem was resolved by rapidly closing the lower paddles and letting more water into the lock but I have to say it was a seriously worrying time and in retrospect I think I’d have preferred to do the locks on our own. With quite a big shore crew the other boaters had been pretty much doing their own thing so it hadn’t been done as sequentially as is necessary to safely go through locks. I would have to say that was a bigger fright than when we caught the rudder at Watford Locks because, unlike at Watford, I had little or no control over what was happening. The best I can now say is that ultimately no one was hurt and we are still floating, but it was a bit too close for my liking.

Tomorrow the weather forecast is rubbish so it is possible that we may stay here until Wednesday.