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Hi all firstly let me say congrats to indigo and thank you for the donation, we are currently at just over £400 for the BCN Society and it’s great to see the scores I reckon if I hadn’t of sank and finished my route I would of had it this year by about 10 points? however a lot has happened since then. Carpe Vinum is currently sat at a hard standing in notts deemed a write off not so much down to the damage although it was a good sized hole but more down to the things I had added such as smev cooker,warm air heater , invertor , new outboard etc. So end of an era. I owned her for 6 years and put a lot of effort in to kit her out as I wanted somit is sad ? However I have just purchased a 25ft tidy looking Springer full survey last year and all is good, it is outboard rather than inboard but I now along with my girlfriend own a steel boat called Mary Beth she will hopefully be transported from Hilperton on k&a to Alvechurch next week and we will Be getting used to her in anticipation for next year ,yes we will be back and you will I promise all get to sample the floating bar at the end. thank you all so much for the messages and support you gave me over he weekend and congratulations to all and how well they did. I feel i made more friends this year than ever before and all Things considered am happy with how we did,mainly we were all safe.

Descending the Hunsbury Lock no 16, Northampton Arm of the Grand Union, we were lucky! My OH was doing the locking, and he saw a log in the water by the lock's top gate. As I was taking the boat in, and saw a log outside of the lock, by the gate, we thought that was the log he'd seen.... WRONG! As the water was drained out of the lock, the boat's stern got stuck against the wall. My first thought that it was stuck on some sort of lip in the brickwork, and shouted to my OH to push us off the lip. What was scary, I didn't notice how much of a dilema the boat was in (strangely), but he noticed the bow was alarmingly down, yet the stern was stuck up. He quickly closed both paddles that was letting out water, and ran to the top gate to let in some water to 're-float' our boat. It was there he noticed our prop was out of the water by about 2ft! When he let water in, he soon saw the stern wasn't 'floating', in fact the water was going above the band at the back, and was quickly rising to the level of the exhaust hole. He quickly closed that paddle. Obviously the stern was stuck somehow. At first he thought there was something under the boat, until he looked, and realised there was a log jammed between the boat and the lock wall, causing us to be stuck. All this happened within seconds! Eventually after banging away at the log with the pole, and with me trying to rock the boat, the log gave way. The lock was filled with water and I backed the boat out of the lock while OH cleared the lock of any dross. We noticed there were several of these logs floating about. They were too heavy for us to haul out of the water, and I'm afraid they are still there - so please be warned. CRT will be notified. This could happen to anyone, in any lock, anywhere! What shocked me the most was that I didn't realise just how much the boat had tipped, it was rather disorienting, perhaps I didn't have a 'register' to the boat's position? Take care everyone! Don't think any damage, apart from scratches, was done to the boat or to the lock.

Some pictures of the trip:

Crikey, that was lucky. So easy to happen as well. Years ago I was in an old (and soggy) wooden narrowboat, passed through the lock, no problems, left the lock, boat slowly filling with water, turned out that as the boat came into the lock a piece of floating plywood had jammed between the brickwork and the soggy bow and shoved itself through a plank like a knife. Ah, those were the days when boats had character.

to be fair it was around teatime and getting dark in late Feb, i was already in bother with the better half for convincing her to push on into Chester and moor near The Lock Keeper, so i wasn’t really in the mood for banter with grumpy types. barriers are not the answer IMHO, put a barrier in front of a well-lubricated young male and his friends and all he’ll see is a challenge/climbing frame/platform to moon from, just gives them further to fall. the underlying problem is more the binge-drinking culture and nobody looking out for friends who’ve had several too many.

People on this forum have been warned many times before about spoiling bouts of righteous indignation with stark facts!

With regard to single handing back in the day passing through Wardle lock going uphill whenthe engine "ole" doors got level with the steps step off & go to top paddles & partly draw one, back & close one bottom gate water would help to close the other, fully open top paddles go to little general store that was by the bridge buy supplies usually lock had filled & boat had exited 1/2 to 3/4 from lock step aboard & motor off (gate/s were left open back then & paddles up ) I seems a strange thing that present day practices cause as much if not more damage to locks & infrastructure with the winding down of paddles /closing gates etc than the dropping of paddles & using boats to open close gates etc may be the system was better maintenance wise

...1000metres, fog later Cromarty, Forties, Tyne, Dogger...

Kingfishers are intelligent and beauty loving creatures. They have abandoned the lower grand union due to the proliferation of aqualine fatboat mark 2 studio flats running their engines night and day, to charge their camera batteries waiting to take birdlife shots.

Hats off to Kustomcut and crew on Carpe Vinum. A very respectable result for a DNF.

Yes and yes!! Years ago, (like 40) when we were very new, my OH who was steering shouted that the boat was going down, and I responded, 'It's supposed to, we are descending the flight of locks' . I had missed the point - or at least missed that the pointy end was going down whereas the blunt end was staying put!! OH climbed to the top off the cabin, leapt to the side, wrestled the windlass from me and stabilised the situation. In our case it was a moment's inattention which put us on the cill - but as you so rightly say, these things happen in seconds. So glad all was well and you were able to re-tell the story (exceptionally well - if that doesn't sound patronising).

And equally odd how folk lockside are able to blithely continue chatting and ignore a steerer frantically hooting horn, in my personal experience. My experience of hanging up in a lock and having everyone ashore ignore me/unable to hear me yelling/hooting starkly illustrated to me how completely helpless you are on the boat if things start to go wrong. The only place to be when locking is on the lockside, NEVER on the boat.

Today at Wardle you could go down the pub, have a pint and the lock still wouldn't be full

I see that the stoppage notice has been update to say the Severn Trent have accepted responsibility for the culvert, and will be making the repairs.

It had 100 locks exactly. That was the point of it but getting stuck in number 53 ended our competitive challenge. We spent about 4 hours re-tracing our steps and not scoring any points and only cruised 23 hours in total. In order the lock flights should have been Wolverhampton - Factory - Brades - Spon Lane - Ryders Green - Walsall (Up) - Walsall (Down) - Perry Barr - Aston - Farmers Bridge - Smethwick - Oldbury. The basic plan needed to average 3.1 mph and do each lock in 5 minutes and if we had kept to that in theory we could have added Walsall Town Arm, Icknield Port and Soho loops and Engine Arm. Doing the locks wasn't a problem. Other than up Wolverhampton 21 where we were ninth in a line of ten boats we were achieving the 5 minutes per lock. Unfortunately we struggled to even average 2 mph going up the Walsall. Next time I shall plan with bespoke timings for each section now we have built some knowledge over three events. Northstar cruised 49 miles and did 95 locks. They clearly didn't legitimately score for all of that though otherwise they would have won by some distance. JP

But did you keep the gland ?

From experience, once these "new fangle" ceramic/carbon face seals start leaking it is too late to lubricate, time to replace. This dinosaur wonders why we ever changed from a re-packable adjustable gland with a greaser.

I definitely don't think I'd try to hold a 62 foot ex-working boat in the middle of the lock, away from cills and gates. It's far easier to always have it nudging whatever is in front of it.

I was unaware I was being controversial! Or suspenseful! It's 58ft.

I can, but I can't be arsed. Life's too short!

Great report and pictures. Kudos on your achievement.

Sue Vetus for misrepresentation. (No she is not a well known personality - that's Sue Venus)

We were staying in a Hotel after a friends wedding, sat at breakfast with an 'elderly couple' on the next table. The gentleman stood up and started to move away from the table and the lady said "where are YOU going", to which he replied "I don't know, you hav'nt told me yet" Did make me smile.

If it goes well it will go into 'Misterton', our Lincoln Keel (currently powered by a JP3M).

If you are a serious bird photographer (which going by your work you are) you should know better than to refer to birdwatchers as twitchers! A twitcher (as I am sure you know) is a person who is after adding another tick to their life list ,often at any cost to themselves and/or the bird. (or has been for all the 60 or so years I have been a birder).

Yes they are but it is not good practice. A lot of bird shots are done by 'baiting' and it affects the birds. If you put the glass tank in water, then the bird cannot asses the depth properly. I am a serious bird photographer and know first hand the arguments between twitchers and bird photographers. Photographers set 'baits' for the birds to get the ultimate shot. Another example is playing bird calls to attract the bird. For schedule 1 birds this is illegal in the breeding season so playing bird song to attract a Cetti's warbler or a Dartford warbler could land you in jail. Playing bird song during breeding disrupts the breeding. There will always be an argument between bird lovers and photographers but if there is a chance of hurting or killing a kingfisher by using a fish tank to bait......then PLEASE don't do it.

Try putting the fore end on the cill with forward gear engaged on tick over, it should ride up the slam board & the move forward & ride up the gate, a bit of " fiddling" with regard to the amount of paddle inially drawn so as not to wash the boat away from the cill to have it drawn back to bang on the slam board should give a smooth ride up in the lock with regard to ballast if you load it fore end down a couple of inches (trial & error) it usually follows the deeper water without to much input on the tiller maybe as the channel has been reduced by modern shallow draft boats it will not be as noticeable as in days gone by when loaded boats produced a more pronounced channel which a "down by the head " boat would follow with very little steering input

I did something like that when leaving the pontoon for the first time at Barton Turns in 2011. Blew straight onto the reeds!! Somebody shouted step by step instructions from another boat, and got me on my way to the fuel berth

It just shows a very poor standard of education and is not something one would expect from an (allegedly) professional organisation.

So what you are saying is that whatever you do someone can find evidence that you are wrong... my professional life was so full of that... reminds me of 1985 at the boat museum with the Thaxted, this bloke walked the full length of the boat twice completely ignoring me, i was mopping off. As he walked away he shook his head and muttered ‘wrong size rivets!!’ I nearly fell off the boat laughing. british racing green ,wooden cabin scumbled roof wrong engine. The only correct bit was the hull and engine room.

13.9 is low for engine running. Possibly an old style alternator with a low regulation voltage, or a more modern alternator that is partially damaged. It will never be much good for charging batteries whilst cruising. However that doesn’t explain why the batteries went flat whilst you are cruising. When you have the opportunity, try unplugging the shore power, keeping an idea of what is being powered, and recording the voltage from time to time, along with the time. Plug the shore power in before the voltage reaches 12v. That way, we can get an idea of whether the batteries are goosed or not.

corrected that for you, you can see the confusion https://scotchwhisky.com/whiskypedia/2532/teacher-s/

I reckon it’s a plastic kingfisher on a stick...

No I’m not! oh... yes I am...

He has probably just been told that he has painted his roof the wrong colour and used the wrong shade of red on the handrails.