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Agreed. David, your contributions to this and other threads are fascinating. Please continue to post, and just ignore the rest of us when the discussion wanders off in odd directions.

Thank you David, you have been there many years ago, possibly before this side was built. Well done to Francis - it’s Sharpness Docks. You can watch much of the action from a car. This image below was taken from our car before I realised you can get out 😂 The ship then sailed straight into the lock next to us. There are websites advising when ships are expected and match these up with anticipated high tides and you will see them. Like West Stockwith lock on a huge scale in reverse these ships come up with the tide swing and turn round just upstream of the lock and then edge against the tide and swing in. Ships exiting the lock set off at a significant speed and watching them swept sideways as they turn is an incredible sight. The pilots are picked up at Barry apparently. It must be exhilarating doing this in such large vessels. It’s not beyond getting it wrong. Two weeks ago one ship ended up beached on a sandbank until the next tide of height came in a few days later. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-68479684.amp The lock isn’t long enough for many ships (many around 100metres long) as the whole of the outer lock needs draining which must waste a moderate amount of water pumped in with mud at Gloucester. I suspect there’s reasons for this apart from financial but I don’t know. and shortly after the first photo I’m not sure what the lever Francis has pictured is for. The old paddles on the original dock are strange ones and I can’t see they are related to the lever but that’s all I can think of. It looks more to do with the dock or locomotive related though

Interesting to see the pumping station not being present on the map at Bratch. An easy one, though not many will have navigated here. Well worth a visit on foot for those who haven’t been.

You can now go diagonal on the Huddersfield narrow with a 60 ft boat. 😁

This ^^^^ And easy enough to do in error even if you know what you're talking about - a colleague of several years ago based his bid for consultancy work in Dublin on a similar bid he'd done in Stockholm - after many checks to make sure there were no references to Swedish places and policies he sent the bid out, with the price in Króna....

Just back from Daventry Non Ferrous Metals. Nice people and a very slick operation. My batteries were duly weighed and I got 44p a kilo (current rate is £440 per tonne) in my case that was £32 odd in total for my three 110amp batteries. Needed to show my driving licence and gave my bank details, they gave me an official ‘duty of care’ transfer note as a receipt. They promised the money would be in my account within the hour and it was. A bit of a bonus was that I had an old tumble drier in the boot that I was taking to the tip and I just casually said ‘I don’t suppose you can take this thing can you’? They did and gave me £1.90 for that too - best of all it saved me a trip to the tip!

Not sure if there is a good or bad time of the year to buy into a shared boat but if you want to have a say in the next years bookings you will need to buy the share before the next years dates are decided. I think the next years dates are fixed in the autumn. If you buy a share after that you will have to accept the sellers allocated dates. Might be worth asking if there is a reason for several shares being on the market . They might not tell you but it might just be folk cutting back expenses because money is tight or they may be buying their own boat.

Wightwick Mill Lock c. 1980 The foam didn't smell very nice!

I have worked my socks off this weekend, I suffer with serious arthritis and I have other stuff going on, so it's 10 minutes work then a sit down, my young helper was not available this weekend, but I think I did OK. I had the skin tank problem, but sucked the water out, I cleaned the swim as best I could and applied some vactan in some slightly rusty spots, I did my utmost to clean the engine bay steelwork above my head, which is a dauntless task, cobweb city! it's no use painting the floor when the roof is full of shit is it. I turned my attention to the engine wiring which was shabby, I have it worked out, and have made a drawing, I have a plan! then I removed all the rotten water hoses and cleaned the engine a bit. I then decided to do some more insulation, and I have put 2 battens up ready for my ceiling plywood, I am leaving a 200mm gap for wiring, which I will eventually cover with a central piece of wood and trim to make it all look pretty, I'm home and having my evening meal soon, then I will collapse, got to go working in the morning. Thanks for all who actually watch my slow progress.

Nobody in their right mind would build a narrow canal, never mind join it to a sensible width one!

A bid for several millions to develop a computer system was from ICL (it was in 1999) on behalf of a consortium which included ICL. They based their data-protection document on one used in an unrelated, earlier ICL bid. ... It included the word artconsortiume. ... (Reverse-engineer it by replacing consortium by icl ...) ======================================================= But surely nobody of right mind would join a long-and-thin canal to a short-and-fat one ?? 🙂

Sounds like a mish mash of information, typical CRT. We need new bigger and better Blue Signs, they can take it out me extra license fee 👍

Agreed - but it is best to learn in 'tiny steps' taking onboard something new or stretching your abilities a little at a time. For an inexperienced boater with an unknown boat (just purchased) I would suggest that he is more likely to frighten himself and be put off boating for life if he tries to tackle one of the most complicated tidal river systems in the UK. After 40 years of having sea going boats, being on the Trent in a NB was one of the situations where I needed to have 100% concentration and was never relaxed. On the sea you have room to make and correct your mistakes - on a river you don't. Friends of ours were going down the Trent from Newark to a Wedding in Lincoln - "they" thought they knew the route to avoid the sunken islands but on a falling tide they got stuck and no way to get them off. Not realising that the tide heights change every day and on the tides falling from Spring to Neaps, the tide is lower every day for a week so getting stuck meant that although they thought they could wait to the next tide to float them off - a smaller tide meant they could not float off, after a couple of days they were high and dry - even at high tide. They missed the wedding !! You need to work with the sea (and tidal Rivers) you will never beat it - it must be treated with care & respect.

Correct. When people refer to solar panels they usually talk about the "panel power rating" (in full midday sunlight in summer), which in my case is 2kWp (the "p" is often added to show it's the peak/panel rating) -- for @Naughty Cal this would be 150W. Energy (not power!) yield per day depends on how long the sun shines for and how brightly, I've been getting 4.4kWh/day which is 2.2x the panel rating -- meaning, it's as if they were in full summer sun for 2.2 hours per day. In summer I'd expect to average 7kWh/day (3.5x the rating), meaning the average light level is equivalent to 3.5 hours of midday sun per day -- more on bright days, less on dull ones. Maximum power reported by the app was 1430W which is 0.7x the panel rating -- as Alan says, probably only for a short time. If NC's panel is 150W and saw the same amount of sunshine as mine, you'd expect a peak output of 150*0.7=105W (measured figure was 110W which is very close) and a yield per day of 150*2.2=330Wh/day -- biggest actual result was about half this (170Wh/day) but a later post said it was only out on full sun for a couple of hours and then parked back in the shade. Panel power figures are quoted with 1kW/m2 incident light, so if they're 22% efficient this would mean 220W/m2 *of actual panel area* -- which is not the same as the panel size because of edges/frames, bigger panels lose less due to this.

Yes, beside the roadway of the high-level swing bridge near the pivot. I presume the signal-style levers are to lock the span in position.

Both of these figures will be shown on the Victron or other application display. Maximum actual output and total output during daylight.

Is that for manually winding open the swing bridge?

My reading is that 1) His panels total 2kW 2) On average over the last 'few days' the daily total generated has been 4.4Kwh/day 3) The highest instaneous 'peak' reading has been 1430w (which may have been only for a couple of seconds)

That's unfortunate. It's a bit like a pub here. Conversation wanders off topic easily, and just as easily returns. IanD and I were just messing about with one such diversion, about how the Sharrow prop is another novel method of propulsion and the photo shows it appears to share some of the features of a Mobius Strip. Your contributions here are greatly appreciated.

If you’re planning on going via Keedby then no.

I hired two skinny athletic young guys to do the engine swap in my boat ........I was the foreman,they did the work ........I could never have done it myself ......but they could never have done it either ,without 100% supervision........the moment the phones come out,all forward movement stops.

I managed to turn Fradley junction green at some point years ago. I was looking for a leak in my boat. can't remember the detail

Mon&Brec

I've never understood how an engine without flexible mounts doesn't just shear the mounting bolts. Where does all that vibration go?

I've seen it mentioned many times - when approaching an oncoming narrowboat, one shouldn't move over too early/too far, so that the boats turn together and pass a nice 6 inches apart. What I don't recall seeing is advice on how close the boats ought to get before both start to steer around each other - can any one offer a reasonable distance? I've yet to have an opportunity to have a successful go at this. Whenever I've tried, the other boat tends to throw themselves onto the mercy of the bank/vegetation to get away from me before I get close and then I feel like a bully and give up on the idea for a while. Until I see an approaching boater with sufficiently grizzled features that I think "Ah, they must be one of these wise folks with proper skills!" only for them to start waving at me to move over to the side before we even get close.

I've only been on the water for about 2.5 years so I'm one of them! No inclination to record myself or others yet though. I'll take your approach and be ready for the happy occasion.

It's my car, and I'm happy with it being posted, and and happy all others involved would also be happy for it to be shared. Thanks for the thought. Daniel

I known the one you mean, I was told the tale by one of the Great Yarmouth lifeboat crew. He set off at first light crusing out of Great Yarmouth passed the Harbour masters office. The harbour master who had only just arrived tried to call him back by radio. When that did't work called out the lifeboat who followed them up coast while using a loudhailer to try persuade him to turn back or at least move futher out to sea as he was crusing only half mile offshore. The wind picked up as did the waves that close to the shore. The lifeboat did try to get close to take him, at that point water was getting too shallow for the lifeboat. The narrowboat rolled over and was washed up on the shore. The owner was pulled out the sea by the Coastguard who had been following along the coast.