River Thames - Osney Lock August 2017
As with nearly all of the Environment Agency signage on the river, the "DANGER WEIR" sign at Osney is very clear and well positioned.
This hire boat, which must have already passed through two locks heading downstream from a hire base, seems to not care.
When this boat passed me at considerable speed, I grabbed a small camera to record what was bound to be interesting.
At the lock approach they eventually went astern, then gathered so much speed that I had to warn them to stop to avoid a collision with me.
Clearly "using tickover" had been understood, but not ideal when you actually need to be slowing down or just stationary. (we had seen a N****N hireboat collide under power with a bow of a moored boat the previous week - and had thought they were perfectly ok doing that "Because they were on tickover! ).
The situation began to look dangerous In the lock chamber so I started filming again briefly. I expected one crew member to go water skiing.
Once they found reverse gear, they kept it in gear again and began to ground on the cill. Seeing the lack of any skills, the duty lock keeper had stayed on to operate the lock, and dealt with the imminent danger very calmly.
I asked him if he thought the boat would ever come back -
he replied solemnly "who knows"
