Another rant!

Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not against old working boats. After all if it weren’t for them there wouldn’t be any canals and no wonderful way of life for us. What I do have a problem with, as I’ve said before, is the idiots who think they are proper working boatmen but can’t control these giants unless they are going in a straight line at a steady pace.

I was sitting on the back deck this evening brushing Chico when I heard this thump-thump engine coming up the lock and then accelerating at a fair old wack coming towards us. It was a “camping boat”, an old working boat with what looks like nissen huts for a cabin and now takes paying 'guests'. There were 2 young men and 2 young women sitting on the roof sipping their drinks and the steerer shouted to me “I say, would you mind awfully fendering us off while I try to moor up”. I kid you not, this was a posh bloke!  This is while his wopping great un-fendered bow was coming closer and closer to our cabin sides and the 4 ‘crew’ stayed sitting on the roof oblivious to what was going on.

The steerer then shouted to people sitting in the pub garden asking if they would pull him over and threw his rope without giving them chance to reply. He had no control of his boat in reverse and without the people yanking on his mooring rope he couldn’t have stopped in time to not ram us.  I stood on the gunwales and pushed him off but I can guarantee that had we not been onboard he would have rammed us and done a considerable amount of damage as no-one on board his boat had any consideration for us or had any intention of doing anything to avoid a collision.  After a couple of drinks in the beer garden they cast off and carried on up to the next lock and beyond, almost colliding with another moored boat on their way.