Adrian suggested:
> Crack open the paddle needed to hold the far gates closed the first
> time you pass it. (That also makes closing the gates easier, BTW.
> Common working days practice).
I have some reservations about this:
1. You demand utopian maintenance (no leaks etc) and then every boat
flushes (loses) water through each downhill lock for 2 reasons (a)
Because it assists in closing the gate (b) *Just in case* one of the
bottom gates is a swinger. This loss of water during the time that
both bottom gates could be shut (particularly if done by one person
only) could deplete a small pound above (such as that in the middle
of the Napton flight for example).
2. There is also a safety implication here. In the hands of an
experienced boater there is no problem. In the hands of a
novice/inexperienced boater they could easily put too much feed on.
When this is done the second gate particularly slams shut violently
and if a person or animal is the wrong side of the gate beam they
could be seriously injured. In the case of some of the very low
ground clearance beams on, say, the Hatton flight I can see broken
legs/ankles as a likely scenario as the limbs are trapped below the
beam.
3. The wear and tear on the gates (which you are so keen to minimise
by *reducing* (?) gate movements) will be made much worse by the
slamming due to water through flow described in point 2.
Having said that, as you point out in your later posting, the Perry
Bar flight (most still have them, by the way. We went up there only
just over a week ago) has the culvert leading to behind the bottom
gates. We didn't use the facility to close the gates but I could see
that in the working days they would have done so. It was certainly
useful for preventing a gate swinging open and gave a very smooth
ride up in the lock with no significant surging of our boat at all.
What may have been common working practice in the working boat days,
dropping paddles, charging gates, using water flow to shut gates
from fully open etc was probably OK in those days when there was
tremendous pressure to 'get on'. But these days, with the relative
fragility of the system infrastructure and the *definite* lack of
maintenance compared to those days such practices are not sensible
and should not be encouraged until such time as we return to their
level of maintenance (Yep, cloud cuckoo land again, I'm afraid).
There are many things that we don't do now that were common in the
past, keeping slaves, sending boys up chimneys and bear baiting, to
name but three, but just because they were done in the past is not
necessarily a good reason for reinstating the practices.
Roger
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