Avast Behind

While struggling to get the dredger up through the pound between locks 17 and 18, yeah, the ones BW keeps saying don't need dredging... (pause for laughter), the dredgeing crew found this little stone. It's the basis for the great round mud-bar that has confounded boaters for years in this stretch of canal. The smaller rocks were merely a bit of decoration, they averaged about the size of a coping stone and were mere barnacles compared to this gem. One wonders what will be discovered when they start dredging in earnest, and they'll have to do some serious dredging to get the dredger and pans up through this section to the actual slippage up between locks 18 and 19.


At last someone has finally noticed how bad it is. When the dredger tried to moor in the slip that is normally occupied by nb 'Hakuna Matata' they couldn't even get halfway in as the pound was about a foot below normal. They tried everything but picking it up and walking it in and no luck. So, now we finally get the proof that this pound needs some serious dredging.

Here's a few more photos, the first one is of the dredger digging itself free from yet another mudflat to the stern of nb 'Cutworks' prior to it finding the big stone in the photo above.














You can estimate how shallow it is by how far the dredging bucket is immersed. Barely.
















And finally, here are some photos of the dredger and the Very Big Rock trying to get over the mudflat. Yup, we need dredging here. Paying attention, BW?