Everyone gets water leaks on boats. It’s the nature of the beast. Not everyone, however, tries to scuttle their own boat with absolute ineptitude.
I’d been in denial about my water pump sporadically kicking in. But when I could no longer hold the denial at bay and lifted the floorboards, things got a lot worse. There was no way the system could have leaked this much though. The underfloor of the boat was brim full of water, just like a massive indoor paddling pool.
This was bad. Very bad indeed.
I got Big John the Engineer on speed dial. Now the usually calm, unfazed John turned alarmingly worried faced with this new problem. He instructed me to turn the boat around from my second attempt at reaching the farthest northern point on the English canal network and immediately return to my borrowed moorings. He began preparing the welding gear as apparently there was a high possibility I had ruptured my water tank.
I’m not sure I can actually face telling you what had actually happened. My toes are curling with embarrassment at my sheer incompetence. Basically, on one of my more extreme crash mooring attempts I had inadvertently ripped the overflow pipe to my water tank right off the side of the bow. Didn’t even know I had an overflow. When I was filling the tank up, it then carried on filling the boat up.
Also (I may as well confess to the whole calamity) it turns out I had only very fractionally turned the water stop cock on. So, when the boat was out of kilter (it happens a lot. You only have to put a week’s worth of cider on one side and she lists like she’s got a rugby team huddled together in a corner. Nothing to do with the sheer amount of cider, obviously), water was being directed away from the pump, causing it to kick in. Making it seem like I had a leak.
I left a relieved John shaking his head at me as I skulked away for a good few days, to make some money for the inevitable bill and to let the embarrassing drama die down.
After those few days respite, I quietly set off north again, heading for Tewitfield. I really had to get on with it as last time I looked I had all the summer to play with. Now though I only had a matter of weeks until my date was due for crossing the dreaded Ribble Link. A tidal link to the Leeds and Liverpool canal and the main network, across the Ribble estuary. It had to be undertaken at an exact time to correlate with the tide and crossed in a tight time frame before the tide turned. Failure to do so would see my little boat chucked about like a chipolata in a washing machine, heading upside down towards Ireland. Well, that’s how I translated it with my skill set, anyway.
To be fair even proper, skilled boaters feared the renowned Link. I decided denial was the best policy with that little problem. Instead, I headed north and back into rural bliss. Third time lucky and man alive it was worth all the grief and struggle!
I cruised down the tiny Capernwray arm, it felt like I’d been transported into an Amazonian jungle. The colour of my little boat and the matching jewel like carpet of duck weed was absolutely breathtaking (no one ever says that about duck weed but trust me on this one).
The Lancaster canal is renowned for its charm and is a valuable wildlife corridor. Indeed the whole of the Lancashire section is designated as a Biological Heritage Site and here I now was, absorbed in its full beauty.
Clear water much more akin to a river than canal. Shoals of fish darting back and forth. An abundance of Kingfishers, some sword fighting for territory, swooping and dipping right alongside the boat. Meadow sweet, Wild Angelica, Flag Iris encrusting the banks adding a romantic feel and all absorbed at the slowest pace. This was boat life at its best and I was loving every second of it.
Just as well I did enjoy it.
Because on the return journey, early on a Sunday morning my engine stopped. Just cut out, dead. Rural bliss remarkably quickly turned into a pain in the backside. I couldn’t pole the boat into the bank as what a few moments previously had been romantic wild flowers were now just frustrating weeds, rendering me stranded.
I was stuck. Rural bliss also equals no passing traffic to beg for a tow. In desperation I turned to Facebook, specifically Lancaster Canal Users Group. A font of knowledge, sometimes satirical and often hilarious, this group had answered my various questions with all 3 in the past so I was confident the lovely Lanky lot would help me again. Help did indeed come. In the form of an octogenarian couple on a beautiful 60’ traditional narrowboat. All I had to do was bob about for an hour or so until they could rescue me.
However, a few minutes into bobbing, a widebeam came hurtling up behind me, I was blocking his path. I wasn’t aware at the time, but this particular boat was owned by man that thought he was actually on a speed boat; however, he was kind enough to tow me.
I threw him my bow line that he attached to his stern, leaving a long length in between us. Then he set off. At breakneck speed. Oh my god, it was like I was water skiing. My little boat was careering from side to side, bouncing off bushes, over mud banks in a totally chaotic and scary way. He released me at a winding hole where I skidded to a halt under a nearby bridge. Jesus, remind me never to do that again.
At least I could now moor up, compose myself and wait for Tony and Margaret on Huffler to arrive.
Which they duly did and what a totally different experience it was to the one I’d just had. Calm organised and incredibly professional, they breasted me up to tow my little boat alongside their big boat making the combined width of 14’. No mean feat to navigate, it was as if these 80-year-olds rescued stranded boats every day.
John fixed her again. It’s just as well his wife Julie turned up to help as people were beginning to talk, I was seeing that much of him.
She was overheating (the boat, not Julie), it was the damn raw water pump again. I was told as long as I didn’t drag her through mud which was the main culprit for blocking the inlet, I could limp on with cruising until the new parts were delivered to fully refurbish the 51-year-old pump.
Red rag to a bull that one.
As time on the lanky was beginning to run out, I wanted to tick another box off on my boating summer there. Slightly ashamedly but at least truthfully, I really wanted to coolly cruise up and moor at the biggest, best and yes, coolest, pub on the Lancaster canal.
I collected my mate Monkey for the journey, him and his dozen cans of Skol. There was no one more uncool than Monkey, having him on board just made me look even cooler, surely?
It was a great cruise there on one of the hottest days of the summer. Exactly what I’d hoped for during the bitter winter months of restoring my little boat on a trailer in a wind tunnel. All the expense, breakdowns and tears. All worth it.
I chugged up to and passed the pub. Coolly, except no one was in the beer garden to see it. I wanted to turn the boat around before I moored as I didn’t want to attempt winding after I’d had a few ciders. But the winding hole was an hour’s return journey downstream, which I was all set for, however Monkey talked me in to turning on a ‘wider bit’ of canal. A manoeuvre I was extremely dubious about as I didn’t want more mud getting stuck in my pump.
For some unfathomable reason I did exactly what he told me to do (note to self: I should never, ever listen to Monkey) I turned the boat into what turned out to be a mud slick and she immediately and fully overheated. Mud had indeed got stuck in the pump and there was nowhere to pull in. I had to cut the engine and let her slow motion crash into the bushes. Monkey sheepishly (there were a few creative words thrown in his direction, I must admit) got the pole from the roof and started poling her towards a possible clearing in the weeds where we could jump off and pull her along. A bit like dragging a recalcitrant puppy along by it’s lead. The pub was only round the corner so how difficult could it be?
Monkey managed to bpole her into a small clearing, we both got off to pull her along as was agreed and hit a giant oversight pretty quickly. The boat managed to get jammed in another massive clump of weeds a good way from the tow path.
So now there’s no one on board, no means of freeing the boat and no way of climbing back on.
Brilliant, a total pair of genius’s right there.
There was only one thing for it. I had to disrobe and wade in, get on the boat and get back to poling her gondola style again.
Can you imagine the scene? On the hottest day of the century at the most popular pub on the whole of the Lancaster canal. Me looking like I’d swam there, we poled the boat to a halt right outside, right next to the now packed beer garden, alarmingly similar to Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean when he steps off his almost completely sunk boat and onto the jetty. We honestly couldn’t have looked more uncool and inept if we had tried. Monkey got a taxi home (apparently he’s too cool to get the bus. That made me laugh) and I was left to wait it out for my long suffering engineer to once and for all, fix the damn pump. Just in the nick of time too.
My date for crossing the trepidatious Ribble link was a mere week away.
There was plenty of preparation to do for this journey,to finally get onto the main canal network.
I had to recruit a crew. Had to get an anchor and the correct length of chain. Life jackets for all of us. 2 way radios to get in contact if I had to, as out on the ocean waves (eek) there was no phone signal. I had to make sure I was covered by my insurance just in case we did indeed accidentally set off for Ireland backwards and upside down.
Almost a week later I was all set to adventure south, along the notorious and barely navigable stretches of weed encrusted canal, where it was common occurrence to travel barely 10 minutes without having to fully stop mid water, cut the engine and unlock the weed hatch to untangle the kilos and kilos of weeds entangled around the prop shaft.
Heading for Savick Brook which leads to the sea lock and the rip tides and sand banks of the Ribble Estuary.
I was absolutely bricking it.
Apparently no one attempts the link with a single cylinder 10BHP engine. That kind of madness gets you stranded on a sandbank overnight and waving at a BBC news crew.
A cunning plan was going to have to form in my tiny mind. And quickly…