On the morning of Tuesday 17th May Lawrence installed the newly painted blue board and within an hour we were blue boarded by a commercial barge in the long stretch below Charleroi where you have to drive on the left instead of the right. The 1m sq blue board is a bit lost on the 90m commercial barge seen below but we recognised the signal straight away and gave our board its first trial in anger. The flashing light worked well too and the clicking of the car indicator unit that we have used to make the light flash, is a useful reminder that the board is up – the board increases our air draft of course, so we must be aware of any lower bridges whilst we are using it.
The 0.8m sq blue board shows up well on Waterdog’s roof. This showing of the blue board lets other boats know that you need to drive on the left for some reason and therefore should avoid confusions between boats that could lead to collisions.
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Towards Namur the river got a bit busier and we started to share the locks with both commercial barges and pleasure boats, the locks were plenty big enough though.