Ref: 250 | Comment Date/Time: 2014-10-06 16:36:27 | By: Chris Bartlam | From: England

Comment: I really did not have much of a problem on my day other than:
My guest list was something of a moving feast right up to boarding. When I checked with the Group contact the day before I was tol they were going to be only 4 (2 down on list provided) but she was chasing up others. 8 arrived which meant I had to call Rebecca with the names of the additional passengers. Had to leave the names on voice mail and trust that this was acceptable (later confirmed ok by text from Rebecca). Lesson - we have to have an early cutoff time/ date from our guests which is irrevocable other than drop outs. This could also offer the advantage of consolidating numbers with other groups.
As per Kevin I was looking for a form that the lead carer could sign to say that a passenger briefing had been given . Fortunately I had made a copy of all the relevent documents and got my leader to sign my "Guest Safety Briefing" notes.
Other than that the day was good. However when we moored and disembarked we tied up to the jetty bollards. No problem in that but we could not leave the boat there overnight and so we decided to manually pull the boat back into a limited space in front of a moored boat which resulted in a bit of a bump on that boat's rope fender which gave Roy a bit of earache the following morning. Lesson: always ensure someone is on a brake rope in this situation.

I think guests should have the opportunity to do locks but with very clear lines of their responsibility - locks and particularly those with ope ratchet gears are a safety nightmare.