Today we set off again in company with Martin, and started working our way through the locks. Some (in fact most) locks fill nice and gently but occasionally there are some where the water rushes into the lock very strongly. In one of these locks the force of water was too much for Martin to hold onto his lines (he was trying to hold both lines from the coach roof of his boat) and he simply had to let go of his lines before his arms were out of their sockets. Thankfully Sara was on the side where the control box was and hit the stop button quickly.
Naturally despite hitting the stop button (which stops the complete lock cycle) the water takes a bit of time to calm down, and sadly this meant Martins boat was swilling around in the lock, and his pulpit (the guard rail on the front of the boat) smashed hard into the lock gates and it was pretty badly twisted out of shape. In a perverse way he was kind of lucky, as his mast went right through the hole in the top of the gate and it didn’t get twisted or broken. Or even worse the rocking and rolling might have put him over the side!
It was a real shame this happened, and he was, as one could imagine, somewhat disconsolate. I told him we would stop and fix it out when we arrived at Mas D’Agnenais, as it was only about another hour further down the canal, and there was no immediate risk of losing his mast over the side.
We duly reached Mas D’ Agnenais and managed to get his boat alongside at a spot where we could get his mast off the pulpit and assess the damage. The rest of the day was spent removing the pulpit and working away to get it straightened. This entailed many adjustments/fitting/removing/trial and error until eventually we had it looking pretty good – in fact if one hadn’t known it had been so seriously clouted you wouldn’t really have noticed. The final part was trying to fit a strong insert into the upright to give it more strength and I ended up using a hardwood hammer shaft and filed this to fit, thus giving as strong a joint as we could make.
It was evening by the time we were finished and I don’t know about Martin, but I was about out on my feet as all this had been in done in very high temperatures. Anyhow I hope that after he has a good night’s sleep he will feel better about things tomorrow. I shudder when I think what might have happened if he was going through the locks himself and there was no one there to hit the stop button.