Training day
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The weather is glorious at the moment so a great day for another training session with Peter (Bisham Abbey school) on-board. There was very little wind today, which was brilliant because it is an unpredictable element you could do without when trying to build skills and confidence. The object for the day was to go downstream and deal with a few new challenges if they arose. We got through Temple lock easily enough but then again we have already done that several times so confidence was quite high, although there were quite a few rowers around which that gave us vessels to dodge/avoid.
Having got as far as Marlow we continued on towards our first major challenge – Marlow bridge with its air draft of 12′ 8″ to the centre span. Our high point was the bow flag pole at 12′ 1.5″, so, talk about cutting it fine! I had done what I could by filling the water tank to the brim in an attempt to reduce our air draft but even so, we approached the bridge as slowly as a snail and then stopped just under the support beam. A tape measure showed that we had 9″ clearance, so on we went feeling pretty pleased with ourselves. Confidence is now high that we should clear it easily in future, in fact on the return leg we did not even slow down.
With this new level of confidence we continued on to Marlow Lock for our first pass-through. Marlow Lock is a pretty lock with lots of interest around it, and generally it is lock-keeper opereated – although the lock itself seemed somewhat daunting on approach, all went really smoothly.
However, we realised that this particular lock could be much more of a challenge if it were unmanned since you cannot reach the lock to operate the gates from the lay-by, but fortunately it was manned today. Still, we made notes on how to deal with this for the future.
From the stern (how quickly we fall into the vernacular, I’ll drop the words left and right from my vocabulary soon) you can see Marlow bridge and church.
On passing through the lock, we continued on down to Bourne End Marina turning just past it. Our intention had been to take on some fuel but as there were other boats already queueing, we abandoned that idea – in any event, I had already arranged for a fuel barge to visit us at the marina the next day, so in a way it would have been rude to fill up at Bourne End.
So, we carried on and moored up further along for a lunch-break and to give the dogs a chance to stretch their legs and have a toilet stop. But just as we were about to leave, a small launch in front of us said they had run aground as they left their mooring and could we help pull them free – this was our chance to be the heroes of the day!! They didn’t realise it, but it was their lucky day as we had Peter with us and he knew exactly what to do – ropes were deployed and then a bit of reverse engine, and we were able to coax them free …. actually it was quite a bit of reverse power as they were really stuck fast. So good deed done and a warm fuzzy feeling that we had been able to lend some assistance. It did however mean that a hotel barge had an opportunity to pass us and we had to follow it through the next lock. Hey ho, some you win, some you lose.
By now Peter was taking more of a back seat, not quite relaxing on the sun deck but generally letting us get on with it. Interesting how there was a bit more bumping around in the locks when he was not whispering in my ear. Still we muddled on and by the end of the day I think we were happy that it had been successful. After all, what a lovely day to go boating.
