It occured to me that many newbie boaters, whether they are first-time hire boaters or people that buy their first boat without prior boating experience, make much the same common mistakes when cruising the inland waterways.
It is said that people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones and I'm the first to admit to making many of these mistakes myself (some more than once !!).
It has further occured to me that these could probably be listed out in some form of top ten.
After all, if the more common potentials for disaster can be identified, then solutions can be given and hopefully, newbie boaters won't appear, well, so new !!
So here goes.
At this point, I could really do with an Alan Freeman "Pop-Pickers" type voice giving the run down in true "Top of the Pops" style.
Asterisks indicate past events that I may have been associated with.
No.1 - Fitting Piling Hooks round the wrong way (on the outside of the piling). *
No.2 - Leaving a windlass on a stationary raised paddle - if the rachet goes, its broken arm time.
No.3 - Having both sets of paddles open (top and bottom) at the same time and then wondering why the boat wasn't going up or down. *
No.4 - Laying the windlass on the balance beam while you close the gate and then hurrying to get on the boat and be off (leaving the windlass behind). *
No.5 - Not banging the mooring pins in far enough and having them ripped out in the night by a fast moving trip boat. *
No.6 - Opening gate paddles before the ground paddles of a lock and filling the cratch with canal.
No.7 - Tying the boat with so many knots, (in case a hurricane should pass through Wolverhampton), you can't get it undone in the morning.
No.8 - Going down a lock, with the boat so far back in the chamber, the rudder catches on the cill as the water rushes out.
No.9 - Rushing into a close quarters situation with another boat, only to go full astern and end up with the stern, paddle-wheeling itself across the canal, so you end up blocking the waterway or swinging your stern into the oncoming boat.
No.10 - Not tightening the weedhatch properly after clearing the propeller, thus flooding the bilge. Not usually spotted until the bow rises out of the water and the stern sits low, like a planing speedboat.
FOREWARNED IS FOREARMED..
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Hey NB Willawaw, this top ten list is fantastic. I think I made all these mistakes growing up, at least once, some multiple times. They seem so easy to avoid now. I like your boating articles, keep 'em coming. You can post this to our site http://www.toptentopten.com/ and link back to your site. We are trying to create a directory for top ten lists where people can find your site. The coolest feature is you can let other people vote on the rankings of your list.
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