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I know there’s quite a bit of negativity around volockies. But today I had a first class experience with 3 volockies on the Tardebigge flight. Id been stuck at the bottom of the flight due to aggravating a long standing back problem. Caused by very poorly maintained lockgear, with paddles almost impossible to move. I’m a burly 15st Builder but really struggled to shift some of the paddles. Any how there was no way I could tackle the flight in my present condition. As the flight is closing I had to get through before I became trapped. I mentioned it to a couple of passing volockies yesterday afternoon and they said they’d arrange help for 9.30 am this morning. True to their word 3 people turned up on time this morning to help me. All ex boaters, they worked me up the flight perfectly. No fuss no bossiness and all in three and a half hours. Id like to give a special thanks to Bill for seeing me all the way to the top lock. I’m moored up now and will have a few days of recuperation. So a big thumbs lads, I’ll be eternally grateful.

Exactly what I reckon they should do, become a volunteer service you can request rather than imposed on boaters.

I guess he got the wrong end of the stick when his doctor prescribed Lithium.

Well protected boat ?

Last month a vollie at Hillmorton explained to me at length how the locks there had been duplicated so that one set could be used for boats going up and the other for boats going down, so as to eliminate the need for boats to cross over when they met. Hence I invented the word Vollocks!)

Cue Sam...

I think he is bucking the trend. ?

Again missing the point -- it's 100% certain that there will be a massive increase in the number of car charging points and a way will be found to both pay for the installation and provide the power, because it has to be. There are about 1000x fewer boats on the canals than cars in the UK, so this problem is 1000x easier to solve. CART doesn't have to solve the power provision problem, it can ride on the coat-tails of whoever solves it for cars. The drive behind this will be the same as for cars -- roughly half the total CO2 emissions even if the power comes from fossil fuels, and zero local pollution -- no more diesel fumes and noise. Yes there will be people who say "but I want to keep my diesel engine and run it for several hours per day making noise and smells because it's dirt cheap and I've got one" -- well they'll be discouraged from doing this by taxes/surcharges, just like diesel cars in ULEZ.

We may finish up having to declare how much domestic charging we have done, at supplier rate, the rest being propulsion and costed accordingly. How about 40 60 sounds about right?

In my opinion that is exactly the wrong approach to take - apart from the old adage that ignorance of the Law/Rules is no excuse. Those boaters who are lacking in their understanding should spend a little time improving their knowledge. Among other things, it might make better boaters of them! Their almost seems like an inverted snobbery about the subject which to my mind is silly. Howard

You'd also be a fan of the Lada Niva then!

Whenever electric drive comes up for inland boating one of the big objections is always the lack of charging infrastructure and the cost of installing it for CaRT and the other navigation authorities. The end of being able to moor out in the sticks, away from charging points. @peterboat's solution is to cover the roof of his wide beam with solar panels. It works well, but limits cruising in the winter. I came up with the idea of going back to using the tow paths for towing boats again with little electric tractors. Towing tractors use much less power to move a boat than a turning propeller in water, which could be supplied with a smaller solar array and less time on canalside charging points. The reason why towing was used when the canals were built was lack of power available to move boats. Horse power (around 750W) really meaning horse power in those days. Towing tractors would require a big change in the way people boat, relearning old skills and needing the restoration of lost canal infrastructure, so is not an ideal solution. The number of canalside recharging points required for conversion of most of the fleet to electric propeller drive depends on a number of factors. How many boats are cruising, more in the summer and on sunny days and on how long it takes to recharge a set of propulsion batteries. People on the forum have been concentrating more on the former, than the later, assuming that recharging is going to take hours, hogging a charging point and making it impractical to convert the canal fleet to electric, without putting expensive charging points practically everywhere. A lot of research is going in to reducing charging times for electric car batteries. Charging time is a big problem for them as it makes long journeys less practical beyond the on board battery range. As an example, a piece of research reported here to reduce Lithium battery charging time to 10 minutes to 80% full. There is a long way to go between a university research study and real use out in the world, but it shows the general trend. Ten minutes to recharge a set of propulsion batteries is an interesting figure. It typically takes ten minutes to take a boat through a narrow lock, a bit longer to take two boats through a wide. On canals with locks and no very long pounds, boats automatically space themselves out at ten minute intervals in each direction. If at a few locations the canal had high current fast chargers, then charging could be done on each boat as it passed, giving them enough charge for a days boating, without clogging up the charging points, or causing queues, or delays. If the boat uses Li batteries for domestic use, then these could be charged simultaneously. This hugely reduces the number of charging points required. Cost would be further reduced by picking locations that are close to high power supply lines, reducing the infrastructure build needed. If boats have some solar photovoltaics on board, then they can moor for days out in the sticks in summer, using the solar to keep their domestic Li batts charged, then move on to the next recharging point at a lock to recharge the propulsion batteries. So, in practice, how might this work. On the Macclesfield Canal and upper Peak Forest, heading north. You have a charging point near the junction with the T&M, one between Hall Green and Bosley locks, one between Bosley and Marple and one at Whaley Bridge, or Bugsworth Basin. When you arrive at a charge point you moor up, connect the charge lead and wait ten minutes, disconnect and go on your way. Time wise on your journey, it is like adding an extra lock each day. I did consider putting the chargers at locks so they could be recharged while in the chamber, but the risk of hanging up the boat on the cable, the trip hazard and adding extra complication in a situation that requires a lot of concentration by the crew seemed too tricky. The exception to the ten minute boat spacing is when marinas and other moorings are adding boats to the canal on a nice day. However, boats in marinas can be charged by slow, low current charging from their existing bollards, so they are entering the canal fully charged up and many will return to their marina mooring that day, or after an overnight stop near a pub. Other moorings would need electric charging added, but again, they could be done with normal 16A mains bollards, not the very high current charging points needed for ten minute charging of boats on the move. What do you think? Jen

I know - I was simply pointing out the errors in the statement : With no coal fired Power Stations left, it will be very difficult to become reliant on them.

Me too. And I wasn't even going to mention his whiny annoying voice. Oh...

I'm not sure that adding 5% - 10% (£100 ?) to the licence fee is going to mean much to those with £250,000+ boats. Far better to increase the NB licence fees, as they are the main users of the system causing the majority of wear & tear, "Fatties" seem to move much less so don't use as much water, or open/close locks gates so frequently.

You will need many more charging points than water points, we can go up to 10 days between water, but normally do 7, and I expect that daily water refills of half an hour are not common.

Don't be fooled by the media/tv programme image of canal life as being all gentle and dreamy. There's unfortunately a fair contingent of miserable old buggers on the canals who try to inflict their grumpyness on everyone else.

Torksey flood gates are still shut and not expected to open this week. Heading upstream from West Stockwith to Torksey with all that fresh coming down is not a trip I would fancy in a narrowboat!

Yes, it can get into shorter parking spaces etc, Octavia is 4.667 m long, the Yeti is is 4.22m long. (My garage is 4.3 m long, so I have a Yeti as it is the most commodious car that will fit into the garage).

Ours had one. It was a pain in the arse in tunnels, so I got rid.

The image of two electric tractors meeting face to face on a crumbly midlands towpath is only surpassed by the imagined conversation between two ex solo boaters in a pub. "I remember the good old days when I could boat on my own the whole length of The G.U. without crew. Now while I steer I need someone to drive the tractor and another two running backwards and forwards with long poles to lift the towline over bushes, small trees and the rooves of permanent moorers " Still I imagine Waterways would earn decent income from charging entry to the massive stadia they'd build every few miles so the great unwashed could sit on a Sunday and watch. The attraction of the above activity interfacing while cyclists and fishing matches argue with each other would be more entertaining than Alton Towers.

While not fitting nav lights to the sides of a narrow boat may save them being hit by trees etc, lights not on the extremities can cause confusion to oncoming boats. Don't ask how I know this ? Haggis

Me too. In my experience it is possible to achieve any two of the following using just the engine before you alight: The bow on the bank, the stern on the bank, the boat stationary. Never all three together!

My centre line is well short of the prop, but still long enough to control the boat in all but the deepest locks (e.g. Tuel Lane). But might not be the case for a shorter boat I suppose. My stern line lives on the cabin slide except when in use, so is at minimal risk of reaching the prop, unlike those left lying on the stern deck or hanging from the tiller pin.

If a new battery has a capacity of 100Ah and you take it down to 50%, then you need to replace 50Ah to get back to 100% If a 'knackered' battery now has a capacity of 50Ah due to sulphation and you take it down to 50% then you now need to replace only 25Ah to get it back to 100% If 25Ah is sufficient for your usage then you didn't need a 100Ah battery in the 1st place, or, you didn't need discharge it to 50% If you have a 10 litre bucket, whilst it is new it will contain 10 litres, empty it and it takes 10 litres to refill it. If you use it for carrying cement about, after a while the old cement stuck to the sides will reduce the capacity to (say) 5 litres. You can now only get 5 litres of water out of it, but conversely it only takes 5 litres to fill it.

And yet the daft thing is cars are getting bigger and bigger and wider and wider while the road lanes with all the hazard lines and obstacles get narrower and narrower. Huge 2 ton SUV's and big luxury cars with enormously great fat wheels and tyres and huge brakes polluting the atmosphere not to mention the horrid sort of rushing noise these fat tyres make, and their huge stupid engines to haul them along. never mind there size clogging up parking spaces. The current Mini is now as big as an old Fraud Siera was !!! absurd. The ridiculous thing too is that the majority of these huge brutes only usually have one little person in them, the dwiver, usually fat and obese like their cars trying to look important. In that case because of the obesity problem and only the one person in them these brutish vehicles could be narrowed up by half if an enlaged driver seat was plonked bang in the middle with steering wheel and controls in the centre also too to accomodate these drivers. These 2 ton dreadfuls must create an awaful lot of pollution to manufacture as well as when they're being aimed-driven. Also I don't like the bulbous protruding aggressive looking fronts of modern cars, they look horrible in the rear view mirror. As for getting blinded by headlamps during the daytime, thats another matter. Ah! git it. These drivers should be forced by law to own a 3 wheeled Messershmit they will need to be levered bruitily into them though. A need to start making them again.

None of this is an issue for folk who simply pay their dues and follow the rules. How nice would it be if all this time and effort could be directed towards something useful rather than fighting the cause of those who chose to push the boundaries or simply flout them?

But "Bell and Barge" is three words! ? Hope you get well soon!