I sent this off but have just found spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. Rookie mistakes. I should know better.

Waterways Short Story Competition

A RELAXING WEEKEND ON THE CANAL 

In less than a mile I reached the Harecastle tunnel in a seventy foot barge with lamp like a candle. The barge ricocheted from side to side. BOOM, BOOM. I was terrified as I passed the entrance of the disused coal mine reputed to be haunted by the Kidsgrove Bogart. I sailed out into the sunlight shaking but  relieved to see my crew, son Robert and partner Philp coming along the towpath. 
All aboard! It went well until -- a long lorry, parked with its rear-end overhanging the canal by six feet. I hit it. The number plate on barge was sliced off.
At the end of  a peaceful day we moored and cycled towards the nearest pub in single file, Philip last.  He braked to prevent himself from touching my rear wheel, splosh - into the canal he went. Philip not an athletic man, leapt out as though he had landed on a springboard. We laughed hysterically. Seeing his hat floating on the water he said, ‘Must take photo, that hat cost me ten quid.’ The hat said, ‘Blub, ’ and sank.
On the last day Philip was steering. ‘There’s the lorry your mother hit on the way out.' He reached for his camera. We hit the lorry for a second time taking off the other number plate .
 Returning through the tunnel Philip steering, I shouted, ‘Look the Bogart’.  A white shape floated towards us then turned into the old mine. A trick of the light?  It was enough to make Philip pass the helm to me.  I steered the barge out into the sunlight.

We have a blurry photo of the lorry but sadly not the hat. Philip is no David Bailey and it seems that neither of us is Ellen MacArthur.