A night to remember

THE wide expanse of Billings Green Flash on the Trent & Mersey Canal proved too much of a temptation for one new hire boater, who rather fancied himself as as a seafarer, but ended spending a sleepless night marooned on the flash, tells Victor Swift.

Having picked up Holly from Middlewich Narrowboats at Macclesfield in the late afternoon of Thursday 22nd, the hirer dropped down four locks, arriving at the flash at 7pm, then headed straight for the middle, simply unable to resist the inviting wide expanse of the flash, but coming to a very abrupt halt as he ground over the original submerged canal bank.

Did it again

After much jostling about he managed to reverse off, but then to our horror, instead of letting the boat continue backwards to turn, the silly sod tempted to turn it by going full pelt forward, in exactly the same direction, ending up well and truly stuck, but much further on the very same obstruction with the counter showing three inches of clear air above the water and the top of the prop clearly seen, with the original water line around a foot above water level, clearly shown in the picture.

This time he had landed himself well and truly in the cart, for there was no way he was getting free, though from the amount of smoke billowing from the exhaust and the turbulence around the prop, he was revving the engine virtually off its mountings this way and that. Even resorting to the pole, but all to no avail—it was not going to budge.

Gave up

Arriving at 7pm, it was 7.40pm when the fella gave up, then managed to shout to us few entertained boaters, so that a message could be passed on to the hire company of his predicament. But it would seem the hirer had a sleepless night, as he appeared as soon as the company's boat arrived to drag him off—at the rather unbelievable time of 4.55am!

My feeling is the company wanted as few people as possible knowing of the predicament, and wanted the boat away as soon as possible. Alas, the wrong fella was on the scene!  The unenviable task was a bit rough on the rescuer, who with his tunnel light still on, must have started out around 3am!

No success

It took quite a few attempts to get the rope to the stranded boat, the steerer of the rather long towing boat not wanting to end up in the same predicament, but when eventually completed, both engines on full revs, the only thing that moved was the tow rope—that snapped.

It was then more manoeuvring of the towing boat, that too became grounded at one time, with the fella pushing from the bank then leaping on as the boat moved free, in a very risky move.

A few more tries to pull the boat off with the rope, both from the bow and the stern to get the boat free, resulted in failure, with again the tow rope snapping.

Stern first

It was then the steerer eased his boat up to the marooned boat, first nudging the stern, that had no result, then pushing the bow, that manged to ease the boat around, that enabled it to then be pulled stern first.

Then with all engines flat out, the tow rope tautened, and slowly, very slowly, Holly at last came free—1hr 25mins later, with the obviously instructions to the hirer to report back to base.

A good job

Mind you, in the conditions at the time and the underground obstructions, the man from the boat yard did a damned good job getting the boat free, for as our Jan remarked 'he must be one pissed-off fella being dragged our at that time of night'.

Meeting the boat near its base later in the morning we discovered it had an engine that needed attention and a rudder that was somewhat bent. I just wonder if they allowed the man another boat in its place, for the last that was seen of him was walking away from the boat with a suitcase.

Checkered history

Poor Holly has had a checkered history, for it was the boat that was stolen a couple of years back by a man who hired the boat, then commenced altering its appearance intending to keep it, but the speed and power of the internet soon had it traced.

If there has to be a moral to all this, is to remember to treat the flashes on the Trent & Mersey Canal with respect.

(The editor is expected back later in the week, when 'normal service' will be resumed.)