Shall I shan't I?

Shall I?

no perhaps not

So I was lucky on the way up the Llangollen as all lift bridges were operated for me.  On the way back I caught them all.  Ho hum

And then today I thought I would call in at Swanley Marina and get some diesel.  Ships Cat and Bobcat decided to go boating without me and without diesel.

In my defence it was windy and with great good luck I had managed to reverse back to the diesel point, leap off with back and middle ropes get them both around a bollard step on board and a quick forward thrust and back into neutral (or so I thought).

When I started to pull in my ropes before the wind took the boat too far away I realised that it was in forward gear still and now too far away to reboard.  A quick untie of ropes,  gradually losing hold of the back one.  By now people were aware things were not going well.  I managed to pull the boat far enough around before having to let go the middle rope.  The boat finally came to rest across the canal and would probably have carried on round and into marina and caused mayhem in there but the walker on the towpath finally realised I wanted him to put it in neutral.  The boater from the marina got hold of the front rope and I ran up and over the bridge.  Phew I was very lucky, neither of my two ropes ended up around the propellor and there were no other boats to get bashed around.  The boater advised me to get diesel elsewhere, they apparently had tried to get diesel before returning their boat to the Marina and ended up having a domestic because of the wind!

I will be having words with both cats shortly.