The hire boats are out

Try The Broads then.

Hi.

Luckily The Thames does not have a great number of hire boats. You want to see the lunatics on The Broads. This sort of thing is commonplace. I am just about to straighten my bent pullpit caused by a hit and run artist and a couple of years ago my little 14ft boat was nearly crushed and sunk by another idiot. The dozy b.....ds wife objected to my language for some reason. I thought it was quite reasonable after being thrown out of my bunk in the early hours of the morning.

Regards.

Alan.
 
the_wanderer said:
Hi.

Luckily The Thames does not have a great number of hire boats. You want to see the lunatics on The Broads. This sort of thing is commonplace. I am just about to straighten my bent pullpit caused by a hit and run artist and a couple of years ago my little 14ft boat was nearly crushed and sunk by another idiot. The dozy b.....ds wife objected to my language for some reason. I thought it was quite reasonable after being thrown out of my bunk in the early hours of the morning.

Regards.

Alan.
Click to expand...

Can someone please remind me why we are taking Naughty-Cal to the Broads :(
 
The Hire Boats are out

Had our first encounter of the season at Bray Lock lunch time Sunday.
Lock on self service and one of the Le Boat big hire cruiser with about 8people on board has started to operate the lock. only partly opened the gates all got on board and proceeded to enter the lock but got stuck in the gates. There was a small Chris Cruiser day lunch right up his stern and another day boat on my tail.
We stopped and I opened the gates full just before they tried to scale the outside of the lock gates they were stuck in. They thanked me and we all went in. The small boat behind me was sideways acroos the lock behind me but we told them to go along side when a young lad about 10 years old tried to climb up onto the lockside using the chain to get his stern rope on, my wife shouted and stopped him and asked the person on the other small day boat who was on the lockside to take his rope which they did.
We now start to fill up and the crew off the Le Boat were doing more than their fair share of the button pushing as they had the most crew. Lock gates open and they try to let go of their foreward rope only to find out it had trapped, after a few tugs the skipper of this vessel screamed at those aboard to send him out a knife. I once again stopped them and told them to place all those on the boat on the front and plus my weight and a few bounces we freed the rope, after making sure their were no fingers or hands near the rope.
He was very gratefull as he said he would get his deposit back now without deduction for a new rope removed. I explained that if the weight and bouncing had not worked they should have shut the gates and dropped the water level until the rope was freed.
This was the first lunch time with no lock staff in attendance they come across and we saw three potentially dangerous actions, had there been a Lock Keeper or Summer hand on hand these would have been reported as near accidents but when private boat owners get people out of trouble they don't. perhaps as the EA are leaving locks unattended more the private boat owners should have a contact number or e-mail address so they can report these things and perhaps the EA would then see sence over manning levels out on the river where they are needed
 
Hire boats

I think some of the coments refering to Ditton cruisers are unwarranted.Sure they want to make money ,dont we all, I have been in thier yard when new hirers arrived.The briefing they get suprised me in its length and safety was utmost.We all have to start somewhere in our boating,I know I did through hiring boat in my early 20s.I went on to buy my first of many boats.I undoughtly made a few people curse when I was learning,
 
If I see a hire boat doing something unwise I usually have a word with the nearest keeper on a "watch out for" basis. Having said that, I only saw one incident last year worthy of comment.

I did see a hireboat stuck on the weir chains next to the Swan at Pangbourne a few years ago and went and rescued them. Regrettable the crew did not consist of a number of very grateful young women, but the two couples on board did stand me some beers.
 
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