Tales of the River Bank

Yesterday morning we were up at 5.30 and on the road at 6.30 enroute to Sawley Marina in Nottinghamshire. The day was bright and dry following a night of heavy rain and the River Trent was on amber, "rising an inch an hour" according to the lock keeper.

Blimey, I sound almost 'boaty' and this is only from reading narrowboat blogs!

Anyway, Joe and I met Ray Cullis, of Trent Boat Handling, for our day of training. Ray is ex Royal Navy and ex River Police so he knows a lot about playing around in boats and is a thoroughly interesting chap to spend a day with. We were being tutored on a 55' cruiser so after some classroom work on board we were off, out of the marina, and very quickly going through our first lock out on to the River Trent! We spent the day rescuing men overboard, (amazing how many there were) turning,mooring, tying up, reversing and learning to recognise the dangers and the elements that can be used to our advantage to handle the boat.

We had a brilliant day with the weather being relatively kind to us and both would highly recommend this training.

What is worrying is that we hired a boat on the River Avon many years ago in an October and set off blithely for Stratford in wind and rain. We knew nothing, we were told almost nothing; absolutely clueless - an accident waiting to happen really.