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A quick painting of a lock from the F&C canal.

Found the link - Jack Hargreaves programme. https://www.liveleak.com/view?t=9ff_1478877559

Lager, Lager everywhere, there's no shame at all, its not to share, Michael, was potted, Xavier pissed, Alexander, snotty, and the steerer Jo miffed. Denzil was naked and Jordan drunk, Harry just bubbled and Simon just stunk. David was lookin at where they might go and Jordan was giving the lockies the big hey ho. a day one way ending in a bar the return the morning after was a trip too far.

is the bloke trying to push the back end out while the steerer is pushing it towards him.

Well, if someone is coming down behind, you may have more water than you bargained for! A wall of water will be teaming straight over the top gates heading straight towards your back cabin! Don't ask me how i know this! Nipper PS, You may have to help the crew to close the gates as they were big tough old sods when i went through last!

Oh dear, it's gonna be a lonely, albeit frequent walk with your new potty, matey. You see, this is a really decisive subject so potty people will have read the original post hoping to find your macerator had exploded covering you and the entire boat with unripened fertilizer, so they could enjoy your dilemma and feel smug about their own choice. When that wasn't the case, they marked you down as a pumper and so you're already fresh out with the potties and they won't revisit this thread since there was no dung related catastrophe involved. Meanwhile, you'd gained some kudos with the pumpers for not only being one, but also being willing to roll up your sleeves - they admired you, even if only from a safe distance. Now, however, you're a turncoat to the pumpers so they think you're the worst kind of potty, and the potties think you're not only a pumper, but probably a smelly one too! You're in a dark place. I advise you post something about an encounter in a sanitary station to let the potties know you're no longer a pumper and try to curry some favour with your new cadre. Good luck!

I should think it is possible, buy a shell, fit it out, sell it, repeat, etc. But, more difficult than years ago and you really must grow into a very handy person indeed, that is important and to be honest I think you must really like boats and absorb a lot of knowledge or you will end up living in a worthless project for ever. It will not be quick either and you will not be living on expensive moorings whilst you do it. That's what I did anyway but everything is more difficult now. And the music was better then, and so was the beer, and the weather was better, and you could tell the difference between men and women and tomatoes tasted better, grumble grumble.

Threads like this always remind me of the time the Tartan Army blew up a pylon on the Scottish border to stop the thieving English stealing Scottish electricity. Half of Dumfries and Galloway went out. The electric was flowing the other way! George

https://www.gov.uk/maib-reports/safety-warning-about-defective-throw-bag-rescue-lines If any of you have bought a new throwline. Please check it as it could cost you your life if it is like one of these

You've never actually been to Wolverhampton have you Peter? JP

First time we came back leaving Bristol moorings at 8:30 and moored on the BOA side of Bathampton Bridge (183) at about 19:00. That included lunch on the hoof, but about 30 minutes for tea by the bus station in Bath. I thought that we were pushing on a bit, going against the stream at about 1600 revs, BETA 1505, but then I'm a bit of a wuz (that spelling looks well dodgy!) when it comes to flogging the engine!! Unless something has changed pretty radically, you'll encounter moored boats pretty much solid from BOA to Avoncliff Aqueduct, clumps of CCers between Avoncliff and Dundas Aqueducts, with the section between Dundas and Claverton seeming to be nothing but moored boats. After that, well, it's just Bathampton and Bathwick to look forward to! I think your best bet might be to get onto the river at Bath, and see the time is like, at least you'll have done the deep lock, the gates of which are flippin' heavy, and folk like watching but not helping! Have fun!

Some more explanation required.

Dont worry I own a narrowboat not a proper boat so I aint no way Jose taking it out to sea. I may be daft but I aint that daft so it will be staying England side of the Bristol channel so rain shouldnt get to Wales.

If, in the unlikely event of this idea coming to fruition, Welshmen (and women) everywhere will be mobilised to go to the Elan Valley and copiousLy iin the reservoirs! CONVOY!!!!!!

We've only done that section twice, but from our experience there is a short pontoon (3 boats?) just under the Bitton Railway Bridge (no. 211) on your right as you head towards Bristol. There is another short pontoon on your left, which also has water and Elsan (I think) but I neglected to make a note of exactly where in our copy of Nicholsons, so that's not much use, I'm afraid. There is also moorings at Hanham Lock, but these were occupied by what looked like long-termed a when we went past last year. On the two occasions we've gone down to Bristol, we've done the deep lock late in the afternoon, and moored by Bath bus station (pretty much opposite what look like old warehouses, which'll be on your left after four bridges) overnight so that we have all day to get to Brizzle. We motor on down to Hanham, phone the keeper at Netham Lock, which is where you pay and get a key, for the water points if I remember correctly. The Netham keepers will point out the mooring spots, opposite the Great Britain being our preferred spot, and you'll be on your way. We prefer Bristol to Bath - we think it has a better feel to it, and there's only so much sandstone this old fogey can stand!! Hope this helps, and that you enjoy your trip.

A quick ink and watercolour sketch of the boat next door. As seen from my front window.

A quick ink and watercolour painting I did a wee while ago of my trusty compass.

I think it was meant that whilst working on a lock, best not to leave all the others in a flight empty

Don’t let the tax man hear you say that.

I believe your boat has evaporated David.

So let's get this straight. Does the team think Posh Tim runs the Historic Festival in order to turn a tidy profit? Anyone care to have a stab at working out how much money he makes out of the whole event? Here's my own estimate: £0.00.

Watched the pogues in early 80s in camden town having walked from battlebridge basin. My memory of starting the engine the next morning are crank crank crank knock knock knock bang. I broke the ice to get the tyre off the prop only took an hour. Kate Jayne off Fred brightly said oh thats mine. Then Shane mcgowen turned up and said may we use the photo of the’ discussion of tyre ownership ’ on our album cover please. bits of this are true. The real lie is Shane Mcgoven saying please and being up in the morning

I wouldn't. I think that's an obscene amount of money regardless of where it ends up. At that rate it won't be long before inspecting the cars in the car park will be as popular as gazing at the boats, if only to observe who is rich enough to pay that much and what sort of 'jam jar' they drive. There are many with walking difficulties and small youngsters they wish to educate who won't be able to perambulate from the next nearest car parking area (which incidentally is where? Busy main road, Unhappy pub landlord's car park, Swindler's customers, parking ??????) I give to charity regularly and I volunteer ….. as and when I want, and not because I'm held to ransom. I'm not coughing up for Tim's OBE. It's become a point to shame people with in this country now. "Ah, but it's for charity!" So what? It's coming out of my depleted pockets, don't try and shame me until you've walked 5 miles in my underpants!

The Daniel Adamson has been freed from the lock as went past us ( at Rock Savage) going up stream on Wednesday & has just passed us going downstream with a school party on board, it wasn’t long before they were back going upstream. They were loading & unloading at Sutton Weaver service point, before the swing bridge.

Let’s do a couple of sums. Your load including inverter losses will be approx 1080watts which at 12.5V is a current of 87amps. Your solar panels - assuming uk summer mid day sun and flat to the rough and you are in the south of the uk - will be perhaps 400w of output which is 32amps. demand is 87 A and solar is 32Amps the ‘shortfall’ of 52Amps to come from the batteries. So after 1 hour you will have used about 50ah. After 2 hours about 100amp hours. If if you did this between 11am till 1pm and you don’t use much power after 1pm there is probably time to recharge your batteries before the sun goes down. This also assumes your batteries were reasonably full by 11am. The danger with this method is that if it clouds over at 1pm there is no chance of recharging that day. added - no so different from the thoughts above

Hi Matt, A rough rule of thumb is that a 1Kw load on a 12v boat will be drawing 100a. If angled at 90' to the sun, 500w of pannels might just about get to the 40a that the mttp controller you mention is rated at. So, it looks like you'd be drawing 60a (100a - 40a) from the batteries, and if you have 150ah of effective capacity (though it's likely to be lower), you might get about 2.5 hours from the system before the batteries have been drawn down to 50% state of charge. This is probably a best case scenario though! Something that I've done is to replace the 1Kw immersion heater with a 500w one (e.g. a vetus one). Mine draws 44a using a 2.5kw sterling inverter so is fine for my 60a mppt controller to keep up with on a sunny day. If you switched to the 500w immersion heater with your current setup, you'd be drawing a tiny 4a from the batteries so could generate hot water with a tiny impact on your batteries. The hot water will take twice as long to warm up with the smaller immersion heater, but if it's hardly drawing from your battery bank then it being on for a good few hours shouldn't be a problem. Once the tank is hot the summer evenings would give plenty of time for the solar to put back the slight discharge the batteries experienced when you were making hot water. A further option is that you can then turn the immersion heater on and off depending on how sunny it is with something like this: link.

Other boaters who were ‘helping’ me as a single hander. Other boaters often tell me as a single hander to stay on the boat and they will work the lock for me. They have the best of intentions but their focus is really on getting me through and out of their way, so the welfare of my boat is not uppermost in their minds.

I made a version of the sump box, with a length of 4" soil pipe, capped off at the bottom, with a hose adapter screwed into the pipe at low level. This sits vertically so that the open top is higher than the shower/bath, and a small submersible pump is dropped into it. The outlet is pumped to the basin waste. All controlled with a switch mounted in the bath panel. A periodic withdrawal of the pump enables cleaning, and the basin waste gives a visual ( and audible ) monitor of working.

Well, If you fill a PRM gearbox to the mark when the cooler and pipes are empty, then run the engine, you'll find the level has dropped quite a bit because it has been distributed around the system So, not quite bollocks Richard

I spread the lettering out a bit more and went for it...... We are quite pleased with the results, though it isn't as smooth and 'fluid' as a professional job, you buggers make it look easy!! Ian.

Hi. I'm a working signwriter specialising in boats. I'd suggest a size 5 long sable chisel lettering brush, square ended as the name suggests. One shot lettering enamels will flow well and cover easily. I use white Stabilo pencils for laying out, they will mark on almost any surface but can be removed later with a damp cloth. I don't get too hung up on letter size, preferring the signwriter's maxim " if it looks right, it is right....the registered at lettering had to be at least 2" tall, I understand, though a job I did earlier this year on an historic GU boat was rather less, based on photos. I suspect that many original jobs were laid out and sized by the signwriter doing the job on the day, rather than following an exact spec from the company. Having said that, I agree with most of your proposed sizing. I've never painted the shadow first, always the letter, that determines the shadow shape and size. Good luck. Dave

I am happy to remain uncharitable as Colours Of The Cut is full of errors, and in my 'business' accuracy is everything As far as I am aware there were three addresses (possible four but I can not find evidence at the moment) applied to Grand Union Canal Carrying Ltd. narrow boats as built: 20 Bucklersbury (March 1934 - January 1937) = turquoise / white / blue livery. 149 Fenchurch Street (January 1937 - March 1937) = turquoise / white / blue livery. Port of London Building (March 1937 - c1941) = red / white / blue livery. My terms of reference are the Health Registration certificates for each boat, which give the Company address at the time of Inspection - and I have sufficient transcripts of each Health Registration certificate to piece this all together. There is no doubt that the Grand Union Canal Carrying Company Ltd. operated from other addresses in London but I do not think they appeared on a cabin side, but if they did it would have been in the first three months of 1937. As always there are a few anomallies where a boat was delivered in early 1937 but not Health Registered until later that year, such as THAXTED which was delivered 15 January 1937 so carried the address 149 Fenchurch Street but was health Registered on 20 July 1937 with the address detailed on the certificate as Port of London Building

It became quite common to see former Grand Union Canal Carrying Company Ltd. narrow boats painted as per the drawing of FULBOURNE throughout 1970's / 1980's when it became popular to re-introduce 'historic' liveries. Clearly owners used the vast array of black and white photographs to come up with their opinions of what the colours and tones would have been and then matched these to lettering of the period. I am sure there would then be an element of copying, especially of those boats owned or operated by museums or those which had undergone professional repainting (which was not common back then). Every single G.U.C.C.Co. Ltd. narrow boat that was painted in the first generation red / white / blue with 'company' lettering carried the 20 Bucklersbury address - perpetuating this livery into history to such a degree that it was published in Waterways World as a part of Edward Paget-Tomlinson's Colours Of The Cut series in April 1994. From this point forward there were only three clear voices that this was wrong - Alan Elyard Brown, Alan H. Faulkner and me. It was not until about 2003 when somebody was prepared to listen as once something is published it is read as fact. The owners of BATTERSEA and ACTIS contacted me regarding the painting of ACTIS in the first generation G.U.C.C.Co. Ltd. livery, and as far as I am aware they became the first to letter a boat with the Port of London Building details, soon after followed by BATTERSEA which at that time was lettered 20 Bucklersbury but red / white / blue. This was a bit of a turning point as REGULUS followed very shortly afterwards and fortunately this trend has continued, although this has been a real personal battle for me especially as I am the only person still harping on. Edward Paget-Tomlison made it clear at first publication in Waterways World that some liveries he drew were based on greyscale interpretation or the distant memories of the few people who could remember these boats in trade or even popular opinion. As I have said earlier in this thread there was an opportunity to add a caveat to the drawing of FULBOURNE prior to Colours Of The Cut been published in book form but it was ignored by somebody who thought they knew better, and every time it is bought to light it is necessary to go though all of this over and over again. Hopefully Colours Of The Cut will never be reprinted, but if it is I hope somebody is prepared to add that caveat