New hirers and locks

I READ with, absolute agreement, the comments in Richard Swan article (Loopy Learners) little knowing that by the end of the day we would have some first-hand experience of new hirers having problems at the first locks they encountered, writes contributor Roger Olver.

The event required attendance from British Waterways staff to refill the pound between a flight of three locks which had been emptied by the crew of a hire boat due to their lack of understanding in how to operate a lock.

Almost no tuition

I did actually meet the hirers as they were halted in the bottom of a lock (while British Waterways went about putting things right) and it would appear that they had had almost no tuition, apparently shown a diagram of a lock and a brief discussion of the workings. By all accounts they didn't understand the instruction they were given as they were all too glad to admit.

The British Waterways guy was really helpful and very quickly sorted the problem out. He did mention to the culprits that in this instance they had only wasted water down the by-washes, had it been at another place on the system they could have flooded houses.

Completely clueless

Descending the locks, when the water levels made transit possible, we met another crew from the same hire company and they were also completely clueless as to the procedure of safely negotiating locks.

So, this was going to set the scene for me to get up on my soap box and berate every hire company in the land at their lack of duty of care to their hirers etc. etc. (well not quite, but you get the drift) had it not been for the very informative insight by Linda Andrews from Cheshire Cat Narrowboat Holidays (Lock working for hirers).

Location of hire company

So this got me thinking in a more balanced way, analysing the location of the hire company involved today and the proximity of the first lock, in one direction and then the other.

The lock to the South of the hire base, which I think they should be using for tuition, is about 1.5 miles away. It is a stop lock of probably six inches rise, but immensely superior to a diagram.

Other locks North of the hire company would be 25 miles and 38 miles respectively, though I would have a serious wager that 90% of their traffic is South.

Not viable

So from starting off the day fully agreeing with Richard, we have been affected by the lack of tuition he was highlighting but I now cannot agree with him. Taking every novice hirer through a lock is definitely not always a viable proposition as Linda pointed out.

Many hire operators are members the Association of Pleasure Craft Operators (APCO) http://www.apco.org.uk/. This member body lays down hand-over procedures and apparently checks the hire companies adhere to the requirements.

Today's hirers incident company are members!

Simple solution

There is of course a very simple solution to this problem, all the hire operators get together and commission Nintendo to produce a handover program for their Wii console !

Or better still get APCO to pay for it, possibly a better way of using members' money and it would ensure they all could comply!