Breath in………….

It was lovely to wake up to sunshine after a very miserable bank Holiday Monday. We left our mooring around 9.30 and joined the queue at Colwich lock. There we were waiting 3rd in line when the day boat from Anglo Welsh whizzes past us all to moor up at the front. They got very short shrift from the lady in front of us so had to reverse behind us by this time there were a further 2 boats in the queue  so there was a bit of chaos. Luckily it worked one up one down so we were soon on our way. We had a pleasant journey in the sunshine.

We had just negotiated the sharp bend as you approach Rugley and making our way where the canal narrows to a boat and a halfs width. Now we were 2ft off the narrow and coming the other way was a Canaltime hire boat by the state of his bow wave he was definitely giving it some hammer. At this point a decision had to be made as there was no sign of the boat slowing down he was obviously determined that he was going to get a 7ft boat through a 4ft gap and the closing speed increased as he throttled up even more. Pauls decision was to avoid a head on collision to throttle up and using our large bow fender rope let him bounce off it this incurred a heavy nudge knocking his bows over to starboard which as he was still going fast pushed him into the bank and drove his bows onto the narrow. As we had passed him he was giving it full wellie in reverse but to no avail. Comment to the helmsman (very politely for Paul I might add) “ you were going too fast and we were already at the narrow bearing in mind you were 50ft off”. By this time the helmsman was throwing his arms up in the air, red faced and muttering something we couldn't quite catch, obviously our comments fell on deaf ears because as he went through the narrow he was back to full throttle again, the wash from the prop was like a water spout.

We are now settled in a decent spot, washings done and drying in the engine room and the sun is still shining.