Narrowboat in trouble at Osney - August 2017
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- Опубліковано 2 жов 2024
- River Thames - Osney Lock August 2017
As with nearly all of the Environment Agency signage on the river, the "DANGER WEIR" sign at Osney is very clear and well positioned.
This hire boat, which must have already passed through two locks heading downstream from a hire base, seems to not care.
When this boat passed me at considerable speed, I grabbed a small camera to record what was bound to be interesting.
At the lock approach they eventually went astern, then gathered so much speed that I had to warn them to stop to avoid a collision with me.
Clearly "using tickover" had been understood, but not ideal when you actually need to be slowing down or just stationary. (we had seen a N****N hireboat collide under power with a bow of a moored boat the previous week - and had thought they were perfectly ok doing that "Because they were on tickover! ).
The situation began to look dangerous In the lock chamber so I started filming again briefly. I expected one crew member to go water skiing.
Once they found reverse gear, they kept it in gear again and began to ground on the cill. Seeing the lack of any skills, the duty lock keeper had stayed on to operate the lock, and dealt with the imminent danger very calmly.
I asked him if he thought the boat would ever come back -
he replied solemnly "who knows"
This is the problem with the hire boat community. Next to none or no tuition.
Oh yeah, so dangerous 🙄
Why are complete novices allowed to hire boats? Surely the damage caused to their own boats is not covered by the excess. What happens about damage caused to others and to the canal infrastructure?
I presume that this hirer will have been shown how to pass through the river Thames lock which is not far from the hire base.
Unless it was on "self serve", and the only boat using the lock, they may have learnt very little.
Customers normally hand over a damage deposit, and the hire company will be paying for a large third party liability insurance to cover even the most serious of events (as do all licensed private craft)
Unfortunately it appeared that possibly only one of the crew in this instance read and spoke English. This was one of the larger boats in that hire fleet, and it was pretty obvious they could not control it at low speeds and had no idea how to employ neutral, or even avoid a large sign saying "Danger Weir".
Probably learning how to move and control the craft at dead slow speeds and to be fully aware that colliding with other boats and their occupants is totally unacceptable, would take even more tuition time, and hire bases have to make a judgement call in a very short time.
There are hire bases which rely solely on a DVD in the post for the instruction, which seems to circumvent any element of practical instruction!
However, inexperienced owner boaters present an equal danger, and we all had to start somewhere.
When you first went on your narrow boat was you not one of them novices until you learned by doing it ? 🤔
Tragic...