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Oh dear. That might have been me steering and although I may have passed moored boats at more than tick over I don't think I have ever boated with a breaking wash. I remember passing several moored boats yesterday and If I saw they were either on rings or nappy pins or permanently moored I would have slowed down but not to tick over. If a boat is moored on pins I creep past. If your boat was not properly moored and moved I do apologise but I must admit I didn't notice any moving. In fact most boaters acknowledged the fact that I had slowed by waving. Haggis

I find the sneering re hire botes the most divisive. I hired for years and was astounded when I hired a hire bote that had no sign of being a "hire bote" and all of a sudden everyone treated me differently! A bit like motorcycles. I make a point of nodding to the moped riders etc when on the hyper bike for similar reasons.

I don’t think many people would object to being asked nicely. We certainly wouldn’t. It is the presumption that because it is a hobby historic boat towing a hobby historic butty, somehow they are very important and everyone must give way to them that irks me. And I’m not talking about draught issues, which are fair enough. The hobby historic boaters probably don’t pause to consider what would actually have happened in the days of yore they seem to want to replicate. Two working, loaded pairs meeting in opposite directions at a narrow lock - I really can’t imagine that one would have given way to both boats coming the other way. It would of course have been one up one down, as is required by the bylaws to save water. I see no reason why hobby historic boaters can’t replicate that bit, whilst being able to replicate the red hankies, silly clothes, attitude etc! Not getting at you Rob, you’re not like that, but unfortunately a good proportion are!

Just nip up to Brentford on a visitor licence. If you are really unlucky and have to stay in london then its best to sell the boat.

Just did Cromwell to Torksey in two and a half hours. All very controlled, but getting into Torksey lock cut across the current zooming around the outside of the bend was quite exhilarating. Next stop, the wildly oscillating Stamp End sluice..... MP.

Just in from getting a narrowboat out from where it was stuck under a mooring. The river has come up, only a few inches, but enough for it to lean over and be pinned under the ledge with tight lines. Took a couple of lads on the side and me to push it out from under and tie again. Not seen the owner for a couple of days. Might have been a issue in the morning.

Anyone who owns a 'Traditional Working Boat' should load the dam' thing with coal, and I mean Load, and take it up a badly silted canal and learn something about handling it. Play acting with a spotted neckerchief is not boating.

Things just get better ?. In the cotton arms and the draft beer was off as the cellar was flooded! Not long after we started on the red wine the draft came back on. Lucky white Heather ? Haggis

I'm saying nothing ...

Actually the entitled drivers have moved to mercedes. Bmw are old hat and you cant drive a vag car after dieselgate, your children become anxious, go on strike at school , fail , and become politicians.

Might be better to take a boat ? The Anker passes very near me and is almost bursting its banks. Fortunately there is a railway embankment and the canal between it and my house.

I’d fish the Whirlpool out and return it under the Recall. Lol

Its usualy private boat owners innitt, not those poor hirers

Wrong they were being introduced before we joined the EU. Yet another classic example of Brexiteers blaming the EU for anything they don't like.

A few years ago I was waiting to go down at Maureen's lock (Wardle lock) in Middlewich. It was quite busy with a few boats waiting to go up. A "working" boat turned up and the crew put the boat straight into the Middlewich Branch under the bridge, just below the lock. As one of them came up all smiling and swinging his windlass, complete with waistcoat and neckerchief, Maureen told him in no uncertain terms to get to the back of the queue and don't ever try and pull that "working boat" stunt again. Crew went back sheepishly to the boat and it backed out to wait its turn. Lovely to watch!

Ah, derision regarding the metric system. I was one of you. I used to feign a blank look when someone said ten metres and ask, all cocky, "What's that in real money?" just like you do. I thought I sounded cool rather than a bit retarded. Then one day about ten or twelve years ago, I measured a piece of metal that was 1ft 5in 5/16 that I was cutting into four lengths. Do that one in your head. I noticed it was 440mm and I stopped using imperial that day. Never used it since. I measure in mm, I cook in grammes. Easy.

The electrician rather than saying "should have lasted longer" really means "could have lasted longer if they had been meticulously maintained".

Would the dog owners and parents take the same test?

My mistake. I assumed this was a public forum. Oh, hang on a minute ............

I looked over that when it was on display in the Earl's Court boat show. The chap said he did the trip alone and unsupported.

Who remembers the reverend on his hotel pair, he set the bar. Having owned converted working boats for 30 years I’m happy to hold my hand up and say I still make mistakes and am still caught out normally when the bottom is to nearthe top. In recent past going through Braunston as boats were leaving the show I was queuing at the bottom lock and let the pair behind me go through as they were travelling together they then left paddles up and gates open all the way up the flight. I think twice before giving way to hobby working boat boaters unless they are loaded. opinionated experts are to be found in all walks of life whether they are volunteers or not. Surely not worth worrying about unless they cause serious inconvenience or risk.

I agree that there are good and bad boaters on all sorts of boats but I think because we expect good boat man ship from those in charge of old working boats that it sticks in our mind when we see otherwise. I know that when 3 boats passed us with breaking washes when we were moored on the Middlewich branch a few years ago I couldn't tell you the name of the hire or private boat but I remember the name of the working boat We were properly moored so didn't move but breaking washes are not good for the canal. Haggis

Fantastic. Same age as my dad and his mates. They're still up for the canals but can't imagine them, me or you thinking it would be a laugh to get in that bateau for so long regardless of where it was floating. Hat is off and double respect; yep the cool dude had to be French!

Hostel boat 'Pamela' and horse 'Jim' on the Llangollen, 1973.

I don't think you have. If you stick around long enough you will find that playing 'devil's advocates' is a time honoured tradition on this forum, which IMHO isn't (always) a bad thing. Soon you may find that the thread appears to disintegrate into inane chatter this is often done to keep a thread alive and prominent and keep it near the top of the list. Mind you sometimes it's just inane chatter?

Let's face it there are good and bad examples of boat handling to be found everywhere, whether the much (and in my view wrongly) maligned hire boaters, the "all the gear and no idea" brigade on many different types of boats, the newbie boaters on a vessel they just bought and also among historic boats. I am never comfortable with this sort of thread because, as you pointed out, the problem boats are not identified so all historic boats and their owners are under suspicion. Your comments allude to the possibility that the boats may have been handled by volunteers. Well maybe they were, or maybe they weren't. By making that suggestion you start to tar all volunteer helms of historic boats with that same brush that you were bothered about being tarnished with yourself. Some of those volunteers you have yourself suggested are excellent will be tarred with that brush. Those that are not excellent have to gain experience somehow and how will they do that if they do not take to the helm? Of course an inexperienced helm should not be "in charge" but even a volunteer with a moderate amount of experience may not be experienced on a specific stretch of canal and could get caught out by unfamiliar depth issues. With regard to the opening post, a succession of evens has caused the poster to draw a conclusion that the behaviour witnessed was associated with historic boats. That is his perogative but, for example, what colour were the boats? There is scientific evidence suggesting owners of different colour cars will drive in differing manners. Has anyone every done any scientific research on whether that applies to boats and if so could that have been the underlying cause of the problem wrongly blamed on historic boats? Personally I think the rude and arrogant behaviour that was displayed was probably a result of the boats being operated by rude an arrogant people. Sadly there are a lot of them around in the world these days and they find themselves on all sorts of boats

I hope you respected their right to express themselves and took account of their poor life experience before judging them ....

A lot of people live in house and are competent boaters. Nor does living on a boat make that person a competent boater.

Possibly a very valid point, Mike. And I suspect the answer is “no”. However the reason I did post was that on balance the number of modern boats vastly outnumber the number of traditional boats. We have only had three instances of discourteous behaviour, albeit on the last three consecutive days, and all three were traditional boats.

Hostel Boats were glorified camping boats, i.e. the internal basic facilities of a camping boat but housed within a cabin structure. Hostel boats appeared on the canals during the 1950's, with the best known being ASTON (from 1962), MARGARET (from c1955) and PAMELA (from c1955) - all of which were horse drawn. The development of these boats was probably a reflection of the infant hotel boat business, and both had their successes. Hostel boats gained in popularity during the 1970's and 1980's, with several local authorities operating their own boats for the benefit of their residents - along with several operated by charities of one sort or another (I operated a motor / butty pair out of Birmingham for a charity). Hostel boats were a broad combination of working boat conversions and new builds, and introduced thousands of youngsters to the world of canals in much the same way that camping boats did edit - as with camping boats, there are very few hostel boats left - if any - and any that are extent will be at a much improved standard as demanded by modern life.

Lots of Johnny Foreigner items on the menu and metric money, but to get to the point I think you are trying to make. The butcher will have sold the meat by the metric measure as required by law. Probably 280 or 290 grams. The restaurant chooses to describe it as 10 oz. Perfectly legal it is part of a dish and can be described as anything so long as it is honest. Two points first we only use miles etc as stick in the mud dinosaurs who want to keep us back in the 19th century and they get so hot under the collar when it is suggested they try the 21st century for a change.. Try buying your pint of beer in a bottle, you can only buy pints of beer when served from a tap for the reasons outlined above.

One of the main reasons for the metric system is it is so simple to use. Britain actually started working towards metrication around the mid 1800s with the introduction of the florin. Generations of stick in the mud dinosaurs have made it take so long.

Sadly there are a small number of working boat types who like to be very brutal with the canal infrastucture, and are happy to hit other boats too. I think they are in some sort of fantasy and trying to re-enact a version of canal history. They are unable to accept that the canal system is now 200 years old, fragile, and no longer has a huge team of maintainance workers, or the funding that was available when it was a commercial transport system. A few "modern" single handed men have a similar attitude. ..............Dave

The Black Prince Owners website seems to have gone offline about 2015 but you can still see an archived copy of it on the "wayback machine" here: https://web.archive.org/web/20140602064533/http://blackprinceowners.org.uk/latestupdates.html Not all the links work - e.g to individual boat records and the stories about conversions - but there's a fair bit of the original info including registration numbers and original names, details of the different designs and so on. Our boat is one of the 'experimental' (!) Duchess models from 2000 - when the characteristic roundy-rectangle windows first appeared.