Full Throttle

1st August 2003

I've worked for H.N.A. so often now and over the same ground so many times that I thought there's nothing more of interest that I could add to intrigue or interest the reader - how wrong can one be!

 

Last Friday, 1 August 2003 I took out a group from "West Drayton Summer Club" on a trip from Coppermill to Willowbank Island just south of the A40 and return to Coppermill some 5 hours later. Bearing in mind that this was my fourth trip in five days I have become blasé (but not to the point of indifference) over manoeuvres that are a  necessary part of a narrowboat day.
Coppermill lock is situated outside a long,low building that, believe it or not, used to be a copper mill!  Originally, the mill was for paper but turned to beating copper sheets for fitting to narrowboat bottoms about 100 years ago. If you've come fresh to this website then the home page shows you the view of H.N.A Headquarters from the lockside.

 

Coming downstream the cut splits into the weir race on the HQ side which was used to power the mill and the navigation into the lock on the far side. As I've mentioned elsewhere in these jottings, the weir can cause a powerful suction when there is "fresh" in the navigation, so, on emerging from the lock going upstream and across to tie up outside HQ, it's a good idea to "give it some wellie" to enable the boat to make the far bank and not get sucked against the weir-barrier.

 

Tim had spotted "Spirit of '57" leaving the lock from his eyrie at HQ so had come onto the mooring to grab the bow-line and make secure. I had seen him and was making ready to secure the stern line at the appropriate moment. Gunning the engine to leave the lock by the right-hand (nearest the weir) top gate I was going to pick up the three people who'd made the lock ready for departure by employing a touch of reverse thrust (for those of you of a certain age, it was the equivalent of Leslie Phillips' "left hand down a bit!")  However, when a little reverse thrust was employed, the accelerator lever snapped off in my hand!!  The looks of consternation on the three stranded souls must have matched mine as Spirit charged, at full revs, for the far bank! Thinking on my feet,  I instructed Damien, who had been steering magnificently all afternoon, and who, thankfully, was still on the counter with me, to switch off the ignition when I gave the word. This he did virtually at the same time as Tim grabbed the aforementioned bow-line. Damien's mum was also on the mooring and grabbed my hastily-flung stern line, taking a turn round an adjacent bollard. This slowed down Spirit just enough to bring her to a spectacular stop alongside the mooring but not before the stern line snapped with a crack that Calamity Jane would have been proud of!   Prior to this exciting finish of what had up until then been an uneventful day, I was going to enter in the log the fact that the morse control had become exceedingly sloppy. This would enable Harold,the ship's doctor, to remedy same before the next trip. As it was, he didn't have to tighten anything up, save the nuts and bolts of a new control the next day. 

 

Tim, seeing my progress into dock at superspeed, was going to have a word with me about my boating skills until he saw the broken control in my hand! 

We were thankful that: 

In fact, the whole thing had happened so quickly that some on board were unaware of anything out of the ordinary!       

 

Barry Holland