Lady Teal has had a few interesting days on the Leeds Liverpool Canal.
The canal at Burnley, between Reedley Marina and Wigan, has a closure that is overrunning by a number of months. Instead of re-opening in March the canal will now re-open at the end of May. Normally we would look to reroute cruises and then make our way through the re-opened canal and catch up our schedule. But in this case the closure is so long, so disruptive to our schedule and only on one section that we decided to see if there were alternatives. We came up with the idea of lifting the boat out of the water and taking it to Liverpool where we could get it cradled back in.
Seems a straightforward thing to do? When you are trying to lift a 42 Tonne boat the options on where you can lift out and in are very very limited. We need a 220 Tonne crane that comes with two support vehicles, one carrying 80 Tonnes of balance weights and one a small crane to lift the pads. We also need a very large lorry to transport Lady Teal. In order to do achieve the lift we also need very solid ground very close to the canal and a crane company experienced in this sort of work so as not to damage either the ground or, more importantly, the boat. This really does limit where it can be done as the area the crane passes over cannot have drains that could be collapsed by the very large weights involved. Whilst lifting the boat the total weight will be approaching 200 Tonnes.
With some looking around we decided to go with Ray Bowern transport for a contracted lift and transport, they do a lot of boat lifts so know what is needed to successful.
Night before we were due to lift some ~@}{@~ gentlemen decided to take a JCB and destroy a bridge control unit just outside Liverpool , BBC Article , CRT initially thought it would be weeks to fix! But they pulled through and have figured a way to manually operate the bridge a couple of days a week till it can be fixed. CRT were brilliant in keeping us informed, but it was all a bit worrying.
Well we are now in Liverpool about to start our series of cruises down here with minimal disruption and change to our guests. This sort of excitement, and cost we could do without. Though one of our guests had the unusual privilege of starting her cruise in Leeds and ending it in Liverpool!
