Hello Jay,
Glad you enjoy the posts, we try to pick out interesting things to share with everyone and we certainly know the route you travelled very well.
What we try to do is move through any choke points when the hire boats are on changeover days and always enter the locks after them.
As you have described many folk jump on a plane, fly at 500 mph, then take a TGV at 200 Kph, hop in a taxi at 100 kph and the first thing they do is open the throttle on the boat wide and say ''**** me'' is this the fastest this thing will go, and then promptly crash it into a bank, or other boat'.
Thankfully in you I now have an independent witness.