Steering

This is the kind of thing that you see when you're steering a narrowboat: though I took this photo from the roof, so you'd normally be a bit lower.


The principle of it isn't difficult. If you move the tiller at the stern ("back" in case you haven't seen Pirates of the Caribbean) to the left, the front ("prow" if you have watched too much Captain Pugwash and insist on correct terminology) of the boat goes to the right.

So here we are, approaching a bend to the right - you'd just move the tiller a little bit to the left and the boat goes neatly round the bend. Easy.

Or so I used to think, anyway.

In the olden days of twenty years ago, Stephen and I had locks and swing bridges down to a fine art. I would steer the boat towards the bank, jump off and hold the boat steady with the middle line (a rope positioned in the middle of the boat, because if you grab a rope at the prow the stern swings out into the canal and vice versa).

Stephen would work the lock gates: when they opened I would take the boat into the lock: I would wait whilst the lock filled or emptied depending upon whether we were going up or down hill, and then I would steer the boat out, steer the boat near to the bank, Stephen would jump on and off we'd go.

On the first day of our boating holiday last weekend, I seemed to remember how to do all this. Into locks we went: Stephen worked the locks: Silverback observed, because he'd never been on a narrowboat before. Oh yes, I thought, this boat is not so easy to steer because it's a hire boat with an engine that's really been rather hammered, but hey! I can do it.

Up the locks we went. No problem. Yes, yes, I know that I have always had a tendency to go "Oooh, look at the cute ducklings!" and start throwing bread to them whilst the boat wandered about a bit. Yes, I know that taking photos of cygnets or foals whilst steering was always going to be slightly bad news, accuracy-wise, but I've always got away with it before.


Then we shared some locks with another boat and on board was Shouting-Instructions Man. He decided that, because I was on a hire boat and was a Only a Girl to boot, I needed to be told exactly what to do with my tiller. By the end of it I had a few ideas, too, mostly to do with him.

After several locks of him telling me to move my tiller to the left, the right and all other directions known to man, he said confidentially,

"D'you know, my girlfriend won't come on the boat with me and I don't know why."

I knew why. But the more he instructed me, the worse I got. I even let him distract me - yes, my fault I know - to such an extent that I let one of the cushions (like bumpers) on the prow get caught in a lock gate and the boat began to tip up at a jaunty angle until the bumper's chain snapped. I have never done such a thing before.

Now, remember that film where Daryl Hannah plays a mermaid? She goes into a television shop and watches a whole load of televisions, and suddenly she can speak fluent English. Silverback, whilst appearing to be merely watching proceedings whilst taking photographs from the bank on the first day or so, had in fact been silently learning Everything About How to Steer a Boat And Work the Locks.

So by the third day I'd most definitely lost my boat-steering touch and I was quite happy to let the two blokes do it. Which they did. Most efficiently. Damn them.

Still, I can make a decent bacon sandwich, which is crucial, after all, on a boat trip. I'm sorry, Mrs Pankhurst, if you think I'm letting the side down.