Post 15 - Tragedy in Stone

Sailing in the spring and summer is so different from the winter months as so many more boats are on the Cut. So timing in finding a mooring can be everything if you're not spending the night in a little used secluded spot. Entering Stone - a pleasant little town in Cheshire - we decided on stopping just before the locks which take you through the town. But being on the cusp of June there was no place for us to moor. So we were forced to continue blindly on hoping we'd find a place for a few days.

We went up through the first lock which is outside the Star Inn and as it was a very sunny day, there was a good audience watching. No mooring in front of us in the pound so through the second lock. We saw a possible mooring in a nice position but when Marian asked it was permit holder only. Continuing onwards past Joules' brewery with some of the workers taking a break on the balcony overlooking the canal to the third lock.

Rising up through the lock, both of us tired I decided that we would spend the night in the short pound before the last lock. The last thing we wanted was to go up it and then find nowhere to moor. We moored the boat on pins. I really don't like them because you have to hammer them in the ground and hope that they are not pulled out by passing boats. No matter that everybody knows that one should pass moored boats at a slow speed but too many don't!

When I was sitting in the boat moored last autumn at Leighton Buzzard two boats went by together too fast. The first pulled my pin out at the bow causing me to run out and grab the rope and the second boat's skipper said I ought to get longer pins passing by at the same speed. Now that's irony. I think it is one of the few things that has become a plague on the Cut and has the propensity to irritate people more than anything else, sadly.

However we moored about a hundred yards from the lock in front of us and could see two men fishing to the right of the lock as we looked at it. We locked up and went for a wander around the town and called for a pint at the Swan Inn. A great real ale pub and then returned home to cook dinner. In the morning I said to Marian how well we'd slept not waking once.

As it was about 8'o'clock and before I ate breakfast I decided to walk up over the last lock and see if there was a mooring, passing a fisherman on the bank. He asked me if I'd heard all the commotion with the police and ambulances that morning. I was really shocked to hear that one of the fishermen had fell in the canal and drowned in the night. He had been drinking and I heard a few days later that the poor chap Ricky. who was only 30, was believed to have fell asleep and rolled in the water. To think I was within a few yards from him but knowing nothing disturbed me for a good few days. Such a terrible tragedy for him and his family.