Chapter Six
Fully Trained – and Still Terrified! 

AS FAR AS SAM was concerned, training day was possibly going to be the best day of his short life. His dad had installed the television, he had a new game to play on the PS2 and, unlike every other day, there were no restrictions, he could actually play for as long as Mum and Dad were busy, instead of just the one hour he was normally allowed.

There were snacks provided (all healthy and good for him), a vast amount of drinks (no additives, no chemicals) and unlimited violence (brain-rotting and mind-boggling). So by the time Dave from the training company turned up, he couldn’t have cared less. He did manage to say hello, but that’s only because I wouldn’t let him past me with the huge quilt (nest-making material) he had stolen from our bed, until he did. He was quite obviously looking forward to his day immensely. I just wished that I could’ve said the same.

Waiting for the kettle to boil, in response to Dave’s ‘White, one sugar, please’, I watched Sam fluff up all his pillows, pull the quilt around him, arrange all his snacks and drinks in easy grabbing distance and, with a grin almost as big as one of his father’s, fix a steely gaze on the big-eared character and his robotic sidekick and completely zone out reality. I found myself unreasonably irritated with him. Here we were in the middle of this ‘big adventure’ and all he wanted to do was play stupid games, but he looked so happy sitting in his ‘nest’ I had to smile and pushed the growing jealousy to the back of my mind. I grabbed the cups of tea and fought my way through the cramped engine room to the back of the boat, hoping that the tea was enough to put off leaving for a little longer.

Dave was explaining to Geoff about something called ‘springing off’. He was a lovely guy who had obviously been around and aboard narrow boats for years, still finding them just as wonderful today as he did 20 years ago. He had run his own hotel boat business so Happy held no horrors for him at all. Unfortunately he had one huge flaw – enthusiasm! He was eager to be off, eager to impart his love for all things wet and sloshy, eager to get us trained and competent. Geoff seemed to be as eager as he was, while I, on the other hand, was eager to go and see how Sam’s new game was progressing, help him eat his snacks and drink his drinks and I was pretty sure there was room in that nest for two.

No such luck.

‘Right, come on then,’ Dave enthused. ‘Let’s get this lady turned round.’

For a moment, I thought he was talking about me and eyed him with wary confusion, where was I supposed to turn? He was, of course, talking about the only lady he had eyes for and, with a turn of the key, Happy came loudly to life and seemed as eager to be off as the two chattering men.

‘Springing off’ went surprisingly well. Geoff stood on the bank with the stern rope wrapped around a bollard, with the tiller far over to the right and the engine chugging away. Happy’s nose moved gracefully out into the marina in a beautiful 90-degree left curve and, at a nod from Dave, Geoff unwrapped the rope from the bollard and just stepped aboard; we were off.

With Dave at the tiller we moved slowly and gracefully through the other boats; he turned her out of the basin and on to the canal then stepped aside and said to me, ‘Here, grab this.’

It is a fact that if someone says, in a casual tone of voice, ‘here grab this’, you automatically take what they hand you and there was a moment of panic when I realised I had control of 70 feet and 23 tonnes of steel; the panic bubble welled up and then just went ‘pop’, melting away into a sort of worried, pleased surprise. Happy was doing just as she was told. We were pottering along very slowly, the sun was shining and other boaters were waving and smiling.

There was definitely a sense of slightly dangerous contentment to be in charge of something so big and cumbersome but which also was incredibly stately and graceful.

Our first major encounter with another boat killed off any nerves I might have been experiencing and highlighted the weirdness that I probably would need to expect living on the river. I had the tiller and thought I was doing pretty well, getting the hang of it, puttering along. I was starting to see the draw of this lifestyle, passing slowly and stately around a sweeping bend. Smiling at Mother Nature’s decorative style and half drowsing in the sunshine, the throb of the engine was lulling me into a semi-hypnotic state.

Dave suddenly stopped slouching with his elbows on the roof and stood up to his full height, frowning down the canal in front of us. He reached down and pressed the horn, then grabbing my arm, reached past me to throw Happy into full reverse. It took me a couple of moments of complete confusion to work out that something was going on ahead of us and I looked along the length of the roof to try and work out what it was.

About 30 feet ahead of Happy’s nose, a much smaller narrow boat was floating sideways across the canal, no one at the tiller. For a moment I wondered if we were seeing the inland waterways version of the Marie Celeste, but then I noticed the raised buttocks of two people, leaning over the bow, trying desperately to fish something out of the water.

This is where I learned another, very valuable, lesson. Narrow boats don’t stop! That drowsy hypnotic drift is one of the most dangerous states to be in. You’d better pay attention to what is going on a good way ahead of your nose – and in our case, that’s a fairly long way ahead – because bringing 23 tonnes of steel to a full stop against forward inertia does not happen quickly, if it happens at all.

Luckily, Dave had been paying attention and his quick reactions meant that we just gently kissed the back of the other boat. It transpired that their kitten had taken a suicidal leap overboard and in their panic to get it out of the water they had both rushed to the front to try and fish him out, leaving their boat adrift.

Pandemonium reigned for what seemed like about half an hour but was, in reality, only a couple of minutes. Kitten retrieved, the young couple, suddenly aware that there were queues building up either side of them, rushed about getting their boat underway again.

Putting Happy in forward and taking up the tiller again, I hoped Dave hadn’t noticed that I had been wool gathering – fat chance!

‘Always best to keep a really good eye ahead,’ he murmured, smiling gently.

I smiled, and nodded, damn! Caught red-handed.

Our next odd encounter of the day was with a lady going very slowly in the opposite direction. Geoff was at the tiller and, noticing her lack of speed and that she seemed to be looking in all directions, leaning out over her boat to inspect ahead and around her, he slowed down. Dave nodded in approval, while I sighed and hailed the woman.

‘Is everything all right?’ We had slowed to a crawl and were nearly alongside. She looked up and nodded.

‘You haven’t seen a stray man have you?’ she called back.

Dave just raised an eyebrow ‘Have you lost one then?’ he enquired. In his gentle Warwickshire accent he actually managed to make the question sound sane.

‘Oh yes,’ the woman put her hands into the pockets of her oversized, rainbow-striped woolly jumper and managed to look a little embarrassed. ‘He jumped off to walk for a bit and get some exercise but the tow path stopped and I sort of lost him, he said he was going cross country and I’m following him – I think.’

Dave put his hand over his mouth and coughed slightly. ‘No, sorry, haven’t seen anyone walking.’

She nodded philosophically and waved, returning to her search of both water and hedgerows. Dave waved back and watched her potter past us.

‘Lesson to the wise,’ he mused, ‘this is the one thing that mobile phones are good for.’

For the next six hours, Geoff and I took it in turns to face the ‘normal’ day-to-day perils we would likely have thrown at us on the long journey down to Cambridge: locks (don’t stand on the gates and look down – makes you sick); winding holes (make sure that you actually have some wind and that it is going in the right direction before you try to turn round); straights (can get boring); curves (anything but boring, can’t see what’s coming the other way); tunnels (cold, dark, wet and just terrifying); open water turns (three attempts at this); what to do when you run aground (after the second attempt at an open water turn); mooring up (make sure you are actually close to the bank before you jump off with a rope) and casting off (make sure the boat is still within jumping distance when you try to get back on).

We also took it in turns to try and engage Sam in the different aspects of the day and keep him company; sadly I think we just managed to irritate him, although he did enjoy going through the tunnel. However, as soon as we cleared the exit, he grabbed another handful of grapes and a yoghurt, bought some more ammo for his Morph Ray and went back to turning robots into chickens, giggling every time he did it. Kapow! Zap! Fizz!!! Cluck!!! Ho hum.

We returned to Braunston at around four o’clock in a heroic frame of mind and moored up perfectly, without Dave’s assistance, just outside the marina on the canal tow path. We were qualified Inland Waterways Helmsmen and there was no peril, no danger that we couldn’t face.

We said our goodbyes to Dave, thanking him profusely; it wasn’t so much the training, which, in itself was invaluable, but all the information and useful tips that he had also imparted. I can honestly say without that information we would have faced far more nasty surprises than we actually did.

Geoff finished his post-training cup of tea and jumped to his feet. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘we need to pump out and fill her up with water, let’s do it now.’

We informed Sam what we were up to and he waved vaguely at us over his shoulder. He had now been on the game for six hours with only a few breaks and his eyes were beginning to glaze; I made a mental note that, as soon as we finished with pumping out, it would be a proper meal and a long walk along the tow path for him – just maybe we could anchor him in reality again.

We fired up Happy’s engine and backed her carefully into mid stream to make the sharp right turn into the marina. Strangely, without Dave there, it seemed much more difficult. I pulled myself together. For goodness sake, I had been doing this all day and with my backbone firmly held together by willpower, I managed to get her around the corner and perfectly positioned by the pump-out for Geoff to step off and tie her up. I was still smugly congratulating myself 20 minutes later when Geoff shouted that we were full of water and all pumped out. I re-started the engine and backed her carefully out onto the canal again.

One thing Dave taught us was that narrow boats do NOT go backwards well, as they lose all their steering. You have to guide the back end by doing short bursts forward and swinging the nose round, then reversing again. I was still watching the bow and trying to get her in a good line to get back on to our mooring when I ran her hard, backwards, into the trees on the other side of the canal. There was a horribly loud, cracking thump, and a handful of pointy twigs impaled the back of my neck.

This is when I learned a lesson that has stayed true ever since: when you perform a perfect manoeuvre, there is never a soul to be seen, but mess it up and you will always have an audience. Size is relative; the bigger the mistake, the bigger the audience. The only exception to this rule is when you actually need help and then it doesn’t matter how big a screw-up you make, there won’t be a soul around and no one will turn up to point and laugh until you have sorted yourself out.

As complete screw-ups go, this was one of the minor ones, mainly embarrassing, rather than dangerous. It took us three or four minutes to disentangle ourselves from the tree and get back to our mooring. By then, I was so flustered, still trying to stem the blood from multiple scratches on the back of my neck, that I bought her in nose-first and way too fast. As a result, we hit the bank with another resounding thump and Geoff’s imminent jump to the bank was aided by a sudden stop in forward momentum, so much so that he was propelled off the bow in a tangle of arms, legs and rope accompanied by a cartoon-like short scream.

Once Happy was all safely tied up, I looked about, wincing, to check just how many people were still standing around, sniggering at our amateur dramatics: not a single one. With the entertainment over, they had melted away, back to their jogging and cycling, leaving the tow path completely deserted.