What would you have done......

[boatone]

In the Thames Mooring thread Coliholic has 'fessed up to being a bit of a plonker.
The facts are these.......
Last sunday we took coliholic and his swmbo for a day out on the river, something we've done a couple of times before without incident and we had no reason to suspect there might have been a major change in his custodianship of the marbles.
Coming out of Penton Hook Lock I gently wound up our single 100hp diesel to around 1900rpm and we settled down to a non wash creating 5knots or so.......not allowed to do more than 8kph on the river, see.....
Suddenly I realise that the lovely teak steeering wheel in my hand is flacid and purposeless....no steering.....zilch!
Usual internal panic syndrome reasonably well under control and heading towards bank at bend with a couple of moored boats available to prevent hitting bankside I pulled engine back to neutral then a bit of astern to bring her dead in the water before calling to Coliholic down below...'Ive lost the steering up here......'
Coliholic calls back........'Oh, that button does do something then !!! Try it now....' and lo and behold my steering control is restored.

Silly sod has seen little red light on autopilot flashing and decides to press the auto button to see what happens!!!!! What he doesnt know is that there is no fluxgate compass connected to the AP so god only knows wot convolutions the damn thing was going through......

His version is absolutely correct insofar as the word plonker definitely figured large in my subsequent few sentences.

Somewhat later when I had recovered my composure I said 'I cant believe you did that!' He looked a little sheepish and replied...'no, neither can i !'

The question now is what would you have done and should I invite the pl*nk*r out again in future?

PS...he also left his camera behind and I have just had a quick look at the contents of the memory card........quite frankly nothing surprises me now ......!


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[mjf]

Very funny!


I do not suppose I am the first nor will be the last to have done something almost similar.

I am batting along on Auto steering and need to give way to a boat - using helm I give the wheel a tug to Stbd. Nil response and wheel a bit limp.......More helm and more helm then panic. Lost steering everyone! Wheel just wizzes around and around with no rudder applied. Close throttles and stop.

Just about to leave the F/B and head down to the steering gear when a thought occurs??????????????????????. Switch off the autopilot and the helm might respond.


Very silly mistake.

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[BrendanS]

Excellent! /forums/images/icons/laugh.gif

You really have to take him out again.....we're waiting for more stories from the riverbank

<hr width=100% size=1>Me transmitte sursum, caledoni

 

[dog]

Could become a regular monday morning series!!

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[DogStar]

Take him out, but make him wear handcuffs?

<hr width=100% size=1>I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy!

 

[Jim44]

Must admit when I read the story on the other thread it really did make me laugh.


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[DogsBody]

Re: Reminds me of the time...

Reminds me of one of the times I'd invited my dad to join us for a trip down the Thames.

There was me & Ms DogsBody, my dad and a couple of friends and we left Bray for a day trip down river. Decided to stop at a pub for dinner on the way home so ended up coming home very late and had to work the locks ourselves. Arrived at Old Windsor Lock, which for those that don't know is quite a big & deep (by Thames standards) lock but does have push button controls for public use, to find a boat about to leave the top of the lock heading off upriver.

Now we were waiting to come into the bottom of the lock and you're supposed to leave a lock empty once you leave it so the boat going out had left a crew member behind to close the upper gates and emtpy it. Seeing them doing this (i.e. pushing the close button) I wandered over and said you get going and I'll sort it out as I'm waiting anyway and its only pushing a couple of buttons after all, so off they go.

I finish closing the top gates as the rest of my crew join me at the controls and we start chatting. After deciding we'd better get on with it I push the button to close the sluices on the top gate to find nothing happens. Press it several times and still no joy. Then realise its now after 9:00pm, which is when the electrics go off, so its on manual from now on. No problem, theres a few of us here to share the work so we wind the very stiff wheel and close the sluices.

A short walk giving us a chance to catch our breath and we're at the bottom end winding the sluices open to let the water out so we can get in. This one's just as stiff as the first and the pair of us winding it are quite happy to rest once we've got the sluices open and the lock gradually empties.

Its at about this point that my dad re-appears having wandered off to have a quiet smoke and asks why we're looking knackered as this lock is electric. Quick explanation follows about the power being off and having to do it manually etc to which he replies "Perhaps you need to press this big red button in the middle to turn the power on?" and before I could stop him he's bashed the big red EMERGENCY stop button which automatically closes all the sluices!

How I refrained from drowning him in the now still water in the lock I don't know, probably the thought one of our crew was a copper and I didn't fancy being done for manslaughter - but I think I could have pleaded that there were extenuating circumstances.

Had to settle for making him do the rest of the manual labour to get us into and out of the lock while we "supervised".

Got any more of those don't touch stickers Tony?

DogsBody.

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[boatone]

Re: Reminds me of the time...

This raises a question I have meant to ask for some time ....why the apparently arbitrary 9pm limit on using the electrics. It does seem rather perverse that we can be trusted before 9pm but not afterwards !

I wonder how difficult it would be to get this extended to, say, 11pm and again between, say, 7am and 9am in the morning?

Or why not all the time when lockies are off duty?

Be nice to think the EA might reply to this but I wont hold my breath....still havent had any response to my earlier suggestions re encouraging narrowboats to raft up when the rivers busy /forums/images/icons/frown.gif

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[TrueBlue]

Re: Reminds me of the time...

Locks below Windsor are open 7 - 9 a.m. just that nobody gets out of their previous night's hangover to use them.

As to why 9 p.m. is closing time, well somebody in EA (or probably was the Thames Conservancy) decided that nine o'clock was really quite late enough to be cruising, possibly due to the fact that by nine you're all tiddled anyway.

OR it may be that the regs: say public operation + - 2 hours from attended operation.

If you pretend to be a commercial operator, you can buy a key to turn the electrics back on.

The whole thing is ridduculous and IMO contributes to why the traffic on the Thames is dwindling. Not only can't you operate the locks easily out of hours, but if the keeper goes for a pee, tends his weirs has a tea / lunch break you have to wind the damn things yourself.


BTW I'm very glad you know about and are prepared to empty the lock after use - not a lot of people bother. Perhaps you wear a Blue and care....

(retires Stage Left, not very discretely)


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Stop what you're doing and wait my signal

 

[Jools_of_Top_Cat]

Reminds me of an exercise on board the lifeboat when I was still on the crew. The Inspector was on board as they do from time to time. I had been put on the fly bridge helm of the Mersey class and was happily showing my skills and attempting to make a good impression. Here was my chance to show the inspector what I could do.

On the Mersey class the boat will steer by whichever wheel is moved first, either below or on the flybridge. The cox turned to me and said turn to port toward the buoy or something and I willingly obliged. Unbeknown to me some cad below was in on this and promptly turned to stbd. Red faced I brought her back around explaining to the inspector I do not know what happened there, awfully sorry.

This happened a couple more times, by now I wanted to crawl under a rock, the inspector and cox talking just loud enough for me to here about incompetence and how these young uns can not steer modern boats.

Obviously all three of them were in on it, the inspector, cox and wad down below.

Took me a while for my sense of humour to return as I was so embarrassed.

<hr width=100% size=1>Julian

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[longjohnsilver]

LOL!

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