coliholic
New member
Had a bit of a worrying experience over the weekend and it's sort of made me think that maybe there really is a need for compulsory training and licensing before going to sea. Here';s the story.
We boat on the River Ouse in Cambridgeshire, some 140 miles of inland rivers. At Denver Sluice, near Downham Market there's the final lock on the river and from there you can get out on to the tidal Ouse and 19 miles later you're at Kings Lynn and then onwards to the Wash. Now most boaters are either content to just use the non-tidal river and just go as far as Denver and turn round again, but a few are brave enough and well equipped to go out to sea. The big problem with the lock at Denver is that once you lock out at HW, you're out for a full tide since the river dries out. So that sets the scene.
On Saturday we were at Denver and met with a nice couple and their 18 month old toddler on their brand new Sealine 23 I think. Chatting to them it appears that they bought the boat at Easter from the Hamble, had one good blast around the Solent with the guy who sold it to them (apparantly it does 35 knots) and then had it trucked to the Ouse and have been happily boating at 5 knots since. Their plan for Sunday however was to go out into the Wash for a play around. He asked me what I knew about the Wash. Seems that he has no charts, didn't know how far from the lock to the Wash, didn't know tide times, had no weather forecast and was generally unconcerned that he couldn't get back in till the next day ('cos the lock closes at 7pm so there's only one lock per day). His plan, if you can call it that, was to go out on the 09:30 lock on Sunday and then just drop his anchor on a sand bank and dry out when the tide dropped, stay out overnight and come back on Monday.
Now this all sounded a bit unprepared and unplanned to me but you can't really interfere can you? Well maybe you can a bit....I pointed out a couple of obvious issues, not least of course his lack of charts, but he said he'd been unable to get any and anyway one of his mate's had done it a few weeks ago and hadn't had any problems so what was I worried about? So that put me in my place.
But it's made me think that maybe licensing has a lot going for it. Or am I being a bit of an old fuddy duddy?
We boat on the River Ouse in Cambridgeshire, some 140 miles of inland rivers. At Denver Sluice, near Downham Market there's the final lock on the river and from there you can get out on to the tidal Ouse and 19 miles later you're at Kings Lynn and then onwards to the Wash. Now most boaters are either content to just use the non-tidal river and just go as far as Denver and turn round again, but a few are brave enough and well equipped to go out to sea. The big problem with the lock at Denver is that once you lock out at HW, you're out for a full tide since the river dries out. So that sets the scene.
On Saturday we were at Denver and met with a nice couple and their 18 month old toddler on their brand new Sealine 23 I think. Chatting to them it appears that they bought the boat at Easter from the Hamble, had one good blast around the Solent with the guy who sold it to them (apparantly it does 35 knots) and then had it trucked to the Ouse and have been happily boating at 5 knots since. Their plan for Sunday however was to go out into the Wash for a play around. He asked me what I knew about the Wash. Seems that he has no charts, didn't know how far from the lock to the Wash, didn't know tide times, had no weather forecast and was generally unconcerned that he couldn't get back in till the next day ('cos the lock closes at 7pm so there's only one lock per day). His plan, if you can call it that, was to go out on the 09:30 lock on Sunday and then just drop his anchor on a sand bank and dry out when the tide dropped, stay out overnight and come back on Monday.
Now this all sounded a bit unprepared and unplanned to me but you can't really interfere can you? Well maybe you can a bit....I pointed out a couple of obvious issues, not least of course his lack of charts, but he said he'd been unable to get any and anyway one of his mate's had done it a few weeks ago and hadn't had any problems so what was I worried about? So that put me in my place.
But it's made me think that maybe licensing has a lot going for it. Or am I being a bit of an old fuddy duddy?
