Keeping Boats Moving
In both the army and at CRT, Dan Allen has made his career out of ingenious fixes. Now, as the new director of a boatyard on the Stratford Canal, his practical flair is helping boaters every day. Sally from narrowboat Craftybird reports…
Dan now runs the boatyard at Swallow Cruisers.
Whether it’s fashioning a folding step for a boater in need or saving a lock from closure with a home-made beam, Dan Allen has built a career on quick thinking and clever hands. Now, as the new company director of Swallow Cruisers on the Stratford Canal, he’s bringing that spirit to every job.
Ingenious fix
When a vital lock beam snapped on a busy stretch of canal, most people would have called for heavy fabrication equipment and resigned themselves to a long closure. But for Dan, then the reactive response team manager for the Canal & River Trust’s West Midlands region, waiting wasn’t an option.
“We’d already repaired that beam once before,” Dan recalls, “by bolting steel plates either side and welding them to the head post. But it deteriorated again and snapped. We couldn’t do the usual fix – and there was a queue of boats waiting to come through the lock. It was a busy day.”
“So we needed a quick solution,” he continues. “Normally, we’d have to measure up, take the specifications back to the workshop, fabricate a steel brace and then fit it. That takes hours, if not days. But I thought – why not make a glulam beam?”
Dan’s temporary beam resulted in the lock being reopened in just a few hours.
With a ready stock of 4.8m timber at the yard, he sent a colleague to collect quick-setting glue and screws. “We cut out the old beam with a chainsaw, glued and screwed the timber together, and had it in place in about five hours. The canal was open again that afternoon.”
That kind of practical problem-solving has defined his career. After six years in the army, where he learned to drive and maintain armoured vehicles, he moved into boat-building and repair. Thirteen years with CRT honed his skills in keeping Britain’s waterways open – work he describes as “being a custodian for the canals, not just for my generation but for the ones to come”.
This summer, he left the trust to take over the boatyard where he’s lived aboard for 15 years.
