Terry wrote: > On both the Ouse and Trent it is common to hit 'mud huts', these are raised > portions of river bed which come and go, and would be too difficult to > accurately report position, and are more prominent at low tides. The only > people who really know this river are the gravel barges that go from > Besthorpe to Goole and Castleford area. > > There is a very useful, but now fairly old (unless they have re-issued it) > Book published by Ripon Motor Boat Club, or is it Ripon Cruising Club, not > sure, that gives much better information than all the other Canal Maps for > both Ouse and Trent.
I was using an, admittedly, old copy of the Trent Boating Association charts which were in general very good as things don't change hugely. However, we followed the chart to the letter and got caught out badly by sticking to the recommended route to the right of the channel at the right hander just past Sturton Pumping Station and opposite Sturton Hinges. I felt Phoenix start to rise up the submerged bank and immediately reversed off but, despite my very best efforts and lots of opposite lock the current just swept the bow right round and we found ourselves going back from whence we had come....Oh bugger, or words to that effect. I took a chance and kept Pheonix turning in the same direction, driving her round, and luckily the channel allowed a complete pirouette. I think the bank must have caught out the following narrow boats also because, due to the time lost in pirouetting, they were once more in sight after the manoeuvre, but we never saw them again even on the following longish straight section. We could only presume that they too had problems there and lost time like we did. We passed one graveller under way and he was very heavily laden. He was sticking to an amazingly close line very, very close to our bank as he approached. It was no problem to go green to green with him at that spot though. We saw another sister graveller just sitting stationary bow on to the shallow and with his motor running to keep himself pushed on. We also heard some radio traffic from the first captain asking the second stationary one why he hadn't set off by now. The only other graveller that we saw arrived to wind just below Cromwell just after we'd been let into the lock. I also heard radio traffic from the lockie to the barge captain saying that he would get us (two boats by now) into the lock and off the waiting pontoon moorings just below the lock to allow the barge to wind with full space available. > > There is one notorious area of sandbank, well more like a small island, but > that has a Warning Board and as far as I can remember that is on Dunham > Rack, or close to. The really notorious bit is at Normanton Stakes but we had no problem there by following the charts. > > You made extremely good time to Cromwell, I have taken longer than that to > get to Torksey. Yes, it wasn't too bad. It was a long hard slog but the 90hp engine helped and I was doing about 2000 - 2300 revs for much of the way. I was certainly glad to get through Cromwell and onto the upper visitor moorings for the night after having a 5.00 am alarm clock call and nearly a full working day stood at the wheel ;-)) Thanks for all your info BTW as it came in very handy. Roger
