A somewhat better day, but still plenty of things to hold us up.

(Boat Flamingo - posted by Cath)

(Retrospective post for Tuesday 21st May)

A new travelling partner - Tasmania

Up at 6 am. I'd just got the kettle on, and was taking the dogs out of the boat when I saw Chris from the boat Tasmania. He and his crew had worked up the canal on their own the previous day, as the boat that they had been paired with was the boat that had dropped out. He said that he was leaving early, because he didn't want to be behind the convoy as he had been the previous day. I asked if he wanted us to work with him, and he agreed, but only if we could be ready by 6:30. We were, just.

Steady progress at first.

We set off up the flight, and at first, things seemed easier than the previous day with more water available. Then we got to Scowcroft Lock No 61. One of the gates wouldn't open. I was completely puzzled, it didn't seem to be jammed in any way, there was nothing on the bottom of the lock, along the cill, which might have stopped the gate moving. I have never seen a lock gate so firmly fixed before.

 

Until Lock 61 decided to completely halt our progress.

Only having one gate isn't a problem. One boat goes in, then pushes over to the other side, then the second boat goes in. However, once Tasmania was in the lock, and Flamingo tried to enter the lock she wedged firmly in the gates, just behind her bow. She was completely stuck.

This exerts huge forces, but still the gate didn't move at all.

We couldn't go in, and we tried reversing out, but couldn't move. We got everyone tugging on the fixed gate - it wouldn't move. We tried 'bouncing' the other gate - pushing rhythmically on the balance beam so that the gate bounces. Sometimes it's possible to dislodge a bit of rubbish that is caught behind the gate and get another centimetre or so of width.

 



Then we tried a 'Spanish windlass' to open the fixed gate a bit. Then on the open gate. Nothing we did made the gates move at all and nothing gave us any more width. 

Moving again.

I went back to the lock behind us, where Daphne and Swan were coming up, and explained the situation. "Oh, that lock's been broken for ages," they said, "it's supposed to be being fixed sometime."

Back at Scowcroft Lock, some of the crew from Daphne came up to give us a hand. "Put some washing up liquid along the bow where it's stuck," I was told. I did this, with little belief that it would help. David at this point was busy setting up a Spanish windlass from the bow of the boat to the bollard at the end of the lock. Once we'd got this done we tried one final attempt before calling out CRT.

Flamingo passed, errm, a flamingo.

With the boat in full forward gear, David winding the ropes to tighten the 'windlass', some people 'bouncing' the gate and a team of blokes at the back of Flamingo with a rope off the boat and a boat shaft. The pulled the back of Flamingo towards them, then pushed it out again with the shaft, wiggling the bows. Then slowly we started to see movement. Flamingo was creeping bit by bit into the lock. Suddenly she was free. We now know for definite where the widest part of Flamingo is.

We carried on, it was hard work all the way, but nothing as bad as we'd already met up with.

 

The ever helpful Ian Mac - 
volunteer who went far beyond the normal call of duty.

The original plan had been to stop in Littleborough, but in the pub the previous night the experienced boaters had been talking about pushing on to Summit - which, not surprisingly, is the summit of the canal. Because we wanted to keep ahead of the other boats we thought we needed to make it to the summit too. We refilled with water and emptied the toilet cassettes at Littleborough, then carried on up the locks.

Stunning scenery has replaced the dreariness of the Manchester suburbs.

Some way up the flight Ian Mac, the CRT volunteer lock-keeper, appeared. He was going to help us up to the top, because he had ways of making water available that we didn't have. He also told us that the other boats had decided to stop in Littleborough, and that Saltaire was still behind us, carrying on to Hebden Bridge, but by now we were too far up the water-scarce flight to stop. The crew on Tasmania were particularly keen to get to the summit before 8:00 pm as that was when the pub stopped serving food, so we were worried every time that Flamingo got stuck again, feeling the time ticking away.

It would not pay to ignore any of these - 
we jammed in locks which didn't have them.

We singled out for the two narrow locks three and four down from the summit, as these were narrow because of subsidence, then Ian Mac said that he wanted Tasmania to tow Flamingo through the next pound and disappeared to find some more water. It didn't work well. Tasmania grounded, Flamingo needed to be reversed to stop it hitting the back of Tasmania - which got Flamingo 'stemmed up', grounded and skewed across the canal. I went up at the next lock where I met Ian coming back down the flight on his bicycle. He said that water was on its way, and I could see a bit drizzling over the top gates. 

Much of the time Flamingo managed to match Tasmania's speed...

Tasmania, being shallower draughted than Flamingo, got off the mud, and made it to the lock. Flamingo took a lot more to move, but finally made it to the lock as the water in the pound was rising. By this point the water drizzling over the gates had turned into a cataract waterfall, and the noise was deafening. Ian had told Alan that he needed to rush into the lock to make sure that he got in against the flow of water. Unfortunately Tasmania had floated back in the current, and as Flamingo got to the lock the two boats jammed firmly in the gates again. Nobody was very happy, but with Ian's calm advice we set up another Spanish windlass to the narrow bridge at the foot of the lock and started bouncing the lock gates again. 

...however, sometimes it didn't!

We got to Summit at 7:30, a 13-hour day. Not quite as exhausting as the previous day, but longer. We all went to the pub with Ian and shared a meal together. By mutual agreement it was decided that as all the other boats were well behind us, and because of the narrowness of the locks, we might actually get on slightly better travelling separately the following day, now that the worst of the trip was supposedly over.

 

Rose of Lancaster Pub to West Summit Rochdale Canal
Miles 10.8, Locks: 27
Total Miles 175.9, Total Locks: 145