Lindy Helen - 1971

Lindy Helen - 1971

Llangollen Canal

Among the many "pre narrowboats" cruisers we hired, one stands out.  I am referring to the Lindy Helen which was hired from Llangollen, Trevor or somewhere near the top of the Langollen Canal from a man named Mr Smout. It's strange that I remember his name but can't remember the hire base. Why am I thinking Maestermyn Cruisers? But maybe that was a later trip. I have a feeling that Mr Smout was stout - an unkind rhyme which stuck in my adolescent mind!

 Lindy Helen - Promotional Postcard circa 1970

The thing about Lindy Helen was her unusual carvel construction, made out of mahogany with the planks held together with some sort of brass rivets. As you may have gathered, I like wood - real wood, and in particular I am a sucker for varnished hardwood. In Lindy Helen I found acres of highly glossed hardwood and I spent a very happy week staring at the woodwork as I fell asleep.

  Lindy Helen emerges from a tunnel

If you are going to build a wooden cruiser, this is pretty much how it should look - a period classic! It is a narrower version of the classic 1950's Broads Cruisers, about whaich I am also very enthusiastic.

However, all was not well with the good ship LH. Sure, she carries us all the way down to the Shropshire Union and back again, but somewhere along the way we must have hit a rock which set off a vibration. I say a vibration like it was the sort of tremor we saw in the puddle scene in Jurassic Park. What I actually mean is the whole boat shuddered on the way back and in the absence of a weedhatch (how did we manage without?) we had no way of telling what the problem was.

Crossing Chirk Aqueduct

I guess that this followed our problem with the bent propshaft on Halcyon the previous year, so it was probably attributed to the same thing. In the event, Mr Smout encouraged one of his staff to take an early bath in the canal only to discover that there were only two blades on our propeller!

Crossing Pont Aqueduct and the Vale of Llangollen

Looking back we seem to have been very hard on our boats, or maybe the craft were flimsy, or the canals were shallow and poorly maintained, or maybe a bit of all three. Whatever the reason, we returned yet another boat to it's owner in a broken down state and scuttled off with out tails between our legs.

It's a good job that the boatyards didnt maintain a blacklist of hirers, or Capt Ahab Snr would most certainly have been close to the top of it!

Update October 2014:

Lindy Helen up for sale.

Lindy Helan has been fully restored and is looking for a new owner. Here are some photos of her in 2014 - almost 50 years after we hired her.

For more details follow this link.