The obvious difference is that the river is bigger and open ended. That means that, unlike a canal, the water is going somewhere. Each lock is associated with a weir and there is generally more current. On the canal the locks simply lifted or dropped you to the level of the next canal, on the river the locks get you around some obstacle (a waterfall, or short set of rapids, in one case a power generating station).
Because the locks are built to get you around the obstacle, they generally are off to one side at funny angles to the general flow of the river. They also kind of sneak up on you. Although we have river maps, charts and a guide book, we (I) am still sometimes surprised when the lock suddenly pops up. I think many of the warning signs are grown over or gone. One of the lock keepers told me that private landowners don't like having the signs on their property.
So, what does that mean? Why am I making excuses? Because my narrowboat handling skills have been tested and three times I have come up a little short.
The first time was at Evesham Lock. The weir was on the left as I approached the lock. There were moorings above the weir, but I thought if I moored there I wouldn't be able to get the boat off the platform because of the pressure of the water running through it. I continued on thinking there would be a more protected place, but there wasn't. I came suddenly on the lock, which sat at about 90 degrees to the channel, and couldn't stop the boat in time to negotiate the corner. I slowly went past the lock towards a small power generating plant under a building that straddled the river. Using lots of astern power, and helm, I managed to turn and get a line onto the sewage pumpout dock. It took us a little bit of narrowboat wrangling to get Lizzy (62' of steel) back around the dock onto the other side where the lock was.
The second time was at Strensham lock. I wasn't expecting this lock at all. I thought we had been through the last lock before Tewksbury because we had gone under a swinging bridge which we had to move. Well, there were two locks, each with a swinging bridge, one not clearly marked. Same thing, me flying past the lock at 2 or 3 miles an hour with the diesel screaming in astern. We got it through that one too.
The final straw was the berthing in Tewksbury. Having learned (I thought) my lesson I eased her into Tewksbury noticing the the river was getting narrower and narrower. We were looking for a berth before the lock, so we wouldn't have to turn Thin Lizzy around and come back upstream to pass through the lock a couple days later. Well, bang, there was the lock, no berths so far, and the river narrowing up ahead. I stopped Lizzy quickly (twice burned) and tried to turn her around to get back to a mooring upstream. Alas, the wind had picked up a bit, and once again the current was playing havoc with my efforts. To top it all off, I had a crowd watching, then crunch, I hit a dock on the other side of the river from the lock.
I straightened Lizzy out, still going the wrong way, being carried along by current and wind. The lock master was hollering at me (I was standing over the diesel and couldn't hear anything). The crowd was bunching up on the bank of the river. I felt like Shakespeare after a bad performance. Ahead there was a low bridge across the river where the current was accelerating and beyond it the river seemed to narrow even more. I was starting to sweat. In a last ditch effort I swung the recalcitrant hulk to starboard and put the bow up against a cement pier (unbreakable) and a fellow boater caught our line giving me a pivot point. The stern swung around in the wind and current, cleared the wall on the other side of the river by inches and we ended up a couple feet short of the bridge, now pointing in the right direction. I finally jockeyed the not-very-handy source of my woes up against the wall and tied her up. Total damage, one broken dock and one badly bruised ego.
Fortunately this did provide the loyal crew with much fodder for (undeserved) jokes about my shiphandling ability, Naval training, thinking ahead etc. Throughout each of these deeply stressful situations they stood fast and responded to my curses like proper sailors. So far there is no sign of post narrowboat stress disorder. A happy crew is a good crew.
Hopefully we can get the old girl out of here, through the last Avon lock, and onto the Severn without causing any more damage.
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