Seventy-six year old Dutch 120foot Barge berthed in the Caladonian Canal with an even older Daimler-Benz engine was eventual safely delivered to Port Medway after a few unscheduled stops for repairs on route down the East Coast.
It was quite an adventure for the five skippers who gelled together under the leadership of the skipper Steve Linaker, whose expert handling of this difficult monster especially when negiotating the narrow locks with the engine spluttering and fading. How a few of the lock gates were not demolished is a minor miracle, as the only means of stopping the forward motion was by hurriedly ensuring the warps were secured unto the quayside bollards. On one occasion the thick nylon line snapped, on another the line did not have the necessary turns and started to slip through.
When shot out of sea lock at Inverness and were confronted by the turbulance of the tide it was not long before the enginel was being starved with the dirty fuel line, quickly dropping the ancor saved us from drifting onto the shaore. Thank goodness we had practised our anchor drill. This was the pattern of stop start all the way to Hartlepool where from necessitiy we had to have an engineer clean out one of the fuel tanks.
If anyone is interested in a more details of this adventurous trip, just let me know. My wife calls that lunch is ready so I must go.