There may be trouble ahead

NABO council member and West Midlands representative Peter Braybrook comments on some more topical issues.

I HAVE recently had a very new experience. Some friends bought an ex-hotel boat and immediately started to move it from the West Midlands region marina where they bought it to a mooring on the Thames.

This meant that they had to navigate the whole of the Grand Junction Canal part of the Grand Union from Braunston to Brentford. They are very boaty people having been dinghy sailors on the Thames and on reservoirs in their youth, yachting on the Mediterranean, ocean sailing and navigating the Canal du Midi with a sail cruiser; living on a Dutch barge on the Solent and on the River Medina on the Isle of Wight.

So one would think that 149 miles and 75 locks would not be much of a problem. But after three days and two tunnels they were ready to jack it in! “I think we have made a big mistake,” my friend said on the telephone. “We need your experience,” she said. I calmed down this yachtmaster and ex-commodore of a Solent marina and agreed that we would supplement the crew for a couple of days. It was a widebeam 65ft long, 12ft beam and nominal 24in draught.

My new experience started when we joined the crew at Ivinghoe Bridge. I had never helmed a widebeam before. At the helm one cannot see the sides of the boat or gauge exactly where they are when entering bridge holes. Four points of possible impact but one can only see two of them. I depended entirely on the signals and indications from a lookout on the forward well deck. And great they were too.

I soon realised the real problem. Canals are really congested and limited in space. Our friends had never navigated where they could actually hit another vessel except when entering or leaving a marina or on the Canal du Midi. I too have navigated that waterway and it is big. The locks are also either manned or automatic which takes some of the strain out of the journey.

But the GUC (Grand Junction Canal) was made for widebeam boats, I hear you say. It can’t be that bad. Oh yes it is. You see it was not made for widebeam boats. The locks were constructed to accommodate two narrowboats side by side and between locks these pairs of boats were towed in line. The channel is wide enough for two narrowboats to pass each other safely without grounding but not two widebeam boats or even in most places a widebeam and a narrowboat.

Add to that the lack of water and the lack of dredging; the intrusion of offside vegetation, fallen trees and moored boats and the difficulties become very obvious. Since I last navigated this canal to London and back there has been a huge increase in the number of widebeam boats. They now appear to be moored all along the canal. The Nicholson Guide that our friends were using as their main navigational aid had the ‘navigational note’ reiterating British Waterways advice that widebeam craft should not moor between Berkhamstead and Braunston. BW knew that this stretch of canal was not built for these boats.

Worse, not better

It is apparent, from the number that are already on this stretch of water and coming on to it almost daily, that the Canal & River Trust does not know this fact. And in the 10 years under its control things have got worse, not better. There are also many more moored narrowbeam boats that are very obviously liveaboard boaters. Inappropriate mooring also contributed to difficulty navigating a 65ft widebeam round bends and into locks. There was many more than one lock landing occupied by a moored boat.

Now I am not against widebeam boats but I am glad that my friends have taken the decision that a more appropriate place for them to take their family boating is the River Thames. I only accompanied them and took the helm from Ivinghoe to Berkhamstead but I could see that they were uneasy about going the rest of the way to Brentford as a crew of two.

We left our adult son, who was brought up on boats from the age of seven, to assist. We kept in touch with progress. They did have difficulties: lack of water in pounds requiring them to wash themselves out of one lock; lock gates that did not open fully that almost stopped them using two locks and a paddle that took two people on the windlass to close it, to mention just a few.

When we met them at Teddington Lock after the passage up on the tide from Brentford, they were very relieved.

They were not only very grateful for our son’s valuable assistance but they had promoted him to captain. “We would never have got here without him,” they said. And they made no bones about the fact that they would not be going back on to the canals in that craft.

Their experience, and mine at the helm of their boat, has convinced me that there are big problems ahead. At our NABO Council meeting this weekend we came to the real conclusion that our canals will not survive without investment. There is a financial shortfall this year indicated by the increase in licence fees imposed by CRT. There are large costs ahead with a large amount of work to be done in reservoir safety and maintenance. The canals need a thorough dredging programme and adequate vegetation management. It will not just be widebeam boats that find it hard to navigate the canals but all boats.

CRT needs our support highlighting the things the charity does well like its front line response to cruising problems and raising the towpath footfall but it also needs our support to inform of difficulties and improve local knowledge. Boaters see the problems first. We need to report them, not just moan about them.

NABO wants navigation at the top of the agenda, as charitable aim number one. Without moving boats we will return to the derelict stagnant ditches of the past and rivers will be only useful as flood drains.