Tuesday morning dawned bright, but with heavy showers forecast. We like to set off early up a flight of locks if we can, but there are drawbacks to this idea as you will see. The Warwick and Birmingham Canal locks are of a relatively modern design. They are wide with solid gates which are often described as heavy. The stonework is pretty consistent in layout with decent bottom landings and stairs up, so it is possible to line the boat up, slow right down and step off the counter with a centre rope, climb up and have plenty of time to use one turn of the rope on a back bollard to slow the boat down and stop it neatly against the lock wall and tie off. If you have a half decent crew one will be shutting the gate behind. If a single boat in the lock as we were, it is only necessary to open the same side paddle as the fill is so fast, and the water flows in such a way as to keep the boat tidy against a the lock side. The third crew member (if you have one as we did) is meanwhile prepping the lock ahead so that there is no delay between locks. To be correct, if the lock ahead was full it should not be emptied until the lock below is filling to save water. This day the lock by washes were running, so not relevant. So what are the drawbacks of leaving early? Well lock 7 was empty as was the bone dry pound above. So how could be the by-washes be running then? The water from the by-wash coming in to the empty pound was the source of a stream that ran through the empty pound under the closed top gates of lock 7 and out through the bottom closed gates. All paddles were down. It looked as if the bottom seal on the top gate was defective, however, alternating the gates proved that both seals were good but the gates were not shutting completely as if the mitres were wrong or the gates had dropped slightly from a loose collar. Perhaps with a full head of water they would seal anyway, but even so this shouldn’t happen. Dog walkers informed us that this is a normal almost daily situation. CRT notified, but with boats appearing in the flight above and below steps were taken to warn them to wait and to start letting water down. The pound filled very quickly and we were all on our way again and our timetable rescued. There was absolutely no mooring available in Braunston below the Marina, so we turned and set off to find our usual mooring below Willoughby Wharf. Wind generator in use for the first time this trip, but the batteries now in their 8th year are showing signs of age and will need to be replaced before our forthcoming trip to Liverpool.