Life Afloat

Attending a music festival by boat transforms the experience. No queuing for toilets or showers, sitting in a tent in the rain or cooking on wonky calor stoves. This year I took my home afloat to Womad (world music and dance) Festival at Reading and moored right outside the venue. There was a long row of boats moored along the bank, including many narrowboats who’d travelled from Oxford, London and the Kennet and Avon.

I threw a rope ladder over the side of Bristol Fashion so I could easily get in and out of the water and went for my first swim in the Thames. On a hot day it was lovely, the water was clear and the weeds tickled my feet. There were a lot of other swimmers around. A couple of ladies asked if they could use my rope ladder to get in and out. They were rather large ladies but I didn’t want to say no, so stupidly I said yes, and one of them snapped the ladder in two.

A helicopter flew low overhead every day to land on the opposite bank, churning up the water, turning neatly on the spot to fit onto a landing pad in between two houses. Yes, Thames-side properties are a bit on the expensive side.

Didn’t spend much time in the actual festival. It was more fun to just sit on top of the boat with a cold beer and watch the world go by.

Coming up to Caversham Lock I drove past a man who’s swimming the whole length of the Thames, from source to sea.

Lewis Pugh started on 17th July near Cirencester and his destination was Southend Pier. He had already been through Oxford and Reading and had Henley-on-Thames, Windsor, London and Greenwich ahead when I passed him. He had a support team on a narrowboat following him.

He completed his record breaking swim of 203 miles in 21 days. Read about it here.

So far I’ve lost in the water…

• three windlasses (dropped in locks);
• four mooring pins (now I only buy the sort with eye holes);
• one boathook (while trying to moor in strong wind);
• one set of keys (always keep a spare set);
• one watering can;
• one mobile phone;
• one photo frame (fell out of the side hatch);
• one shoe;
• a £250 camera;
• and I nearly went in myself once.

I also once drove off leaving the boat pole behind on the towpath.

My watering can fell in Sonning Lock last night while I was tying the boat up. A fellow boater who saw this happen went back to his boat and brought back a magnet on a rope. He soon retrieved the can for me and said he often goes trawling for dropped windlasses, paints them and resells them. I’d like to thank that gentleman.

Someone apppears to have dropped their car in the Thames…

This Sunday some friends joined me in Windsor to go boating, eight of us in all.

Bristol Fashion, being in a Dutch Barge style, has a wooden cabin at the back to keep the driver dry and warm, but today it was sunny so we lifted the roof off and folded the sides down on their hinges. It’s great to feel a cool breeze on a warm day as you drive along.

We drove slowly from Windsor to Boveney Lock, taking in some fine views, past the racecourse and into very pretty open countryside. There is a fine little church, St Magdalene’s, to the right, and big white houses with well-kept gardens to the left. At Windsor Marina we turned the boat around. I love that on the river you can turn right round in a single wide swoop; on the canals you sometimes have to travel miles to the next winding hole and even then you have to execute a three or more point turn. Filled up with diesel (I’ve only used £30 worth in six weeks) and water and then we headed back with one of my guests at the helm.

Back in Windsor I had some parking problems because the wind was blowing strongly. One of the kids on board thought he’d throw a line over a tree trunk, intending to hold the boat fast, only for the trunk to get pulled out of the ground and into the water. Oops.

On dry land, we put the tv on top of the boat, out came the barbecues and we sat on the accidentally felled tree trunk to watch the world cup final. Windsor Castle loomed under a cloudless sky. Opened a few beers. Perfect.

On the way to Windsor a couple of people in rowing boats waved at me and asked for a lift. They were supposed to have taken the boats back by noon and the only way they’d get there on time is if I gave them a tow to the next lock.

So I tied one boat to the rail at the stern (making sure the rower could quickly release the knot if they needed to) and the two boats tied to each other. Then they sat back, relaxed and let my boat do the work.

The locks on the Thames are somewhat different to those I’ve used on the canals.

In my regular haunts, between Camden, Cowley and Hanwell, there are over 20 miles of canal with no locks and it’s easy to cover a long distance quickly. In other places such as around Marsworth there are several locks per mile and the going is much slower. On the canals you usually operate the locks yourself. You use a metal tool called a windlass to open and close sluice gates to let water in or out of the lock; then pull on wooden beams to open the gates to let the boat in or out. The boat has to be tied up carefully so it doesn’t crash into the lock gates or, worse, damage the propellor on the stone cill, its position marked by white paint. It can be fun, especially at places like Camden and Stoke Bruerne where crowds of tourists stand and watch you working; it can be good exercise; but in foul weather it’s far less enjoyable and the stone sides of the lock can get slippery. Here’s an animation that shows how a lock works.

Working locks is easier if you have a crew but I usually travel alone so it’s always handy to be able to share a lock with another boat.

The locks on the Thames are much easier to cope with if you’re boating alone. They are all manned by (so far) friendly and helpful lock keepers who can help you attach your ropes to the bollards and offer advice – and make sure you’ve paid your license! Longer ropes are needed on the Thames and, whereas on the canals I would just tie up a single rope from the centre of the boat’s roof, here both bow and stern ropes must be tied. I prefer to stand on the middle of the top of the boat holding both ropes tight to keep the boat from straying.

What’s amazed me is the number of boats that can share one of the locks on the Thames. On the canals there’s only room for two boats but yesterday on a busy, hot Sunday, there were over a dozen boats in the lock below Windsor with more boats queueing behind them. The lock keeper had to make sure they were all roped up safe and secure before using the control panel to automatically open the sluice gates.

One keeper put a portable tv on top of my boat and asked me to deliver it to the keeper at the next lock. He’d borrowed it to watch England lose a match. My first cargo.

According to the website of one of the lock keepers at Teddington, if you were going to empty the Launch Lock by drinking the water in it, at the recommended daily rate of 2 litres of water a day, it would take just over 3,000 years to drink it dry. This site at www.teddington-lock.co.uk is well worth a visit, just for the photo of the yellow submarine!