Leaderboard

We looked to hire a boat on the Broads this summer for a week but very quickly changed our mind when we got to the price page. (£2768 + £25 parking + £40 pet charge) https://www.broads.co.uk/boats/fair-chancellor/?unit_id=1556&arrival=2024-06-29&duration=604800&adults=2&children=0&arrival_time=16:00:00 We have booked the Isle of Wight ferry instead and will have a week over there with the van. Including food, drink and fuel it will come nowhere near the cost of the boat hire! The hire yards are very much at a point now where they are pricing themselves out of the market. Foreign travel is open for business again and it makes holidaying in the UK look damn expensive.

This is not a description of the canal, no more than of its history - those you can find easily elsewhere. It is an indication of the vessels you could have expected to meet on a transit of it during August 1990. It is about boats and ships, with the waterway in the background. Most of the vessels I will describe have gone. Since I have no idea whether it will be of interest I will start with just a couple. If there is interest I will go on. If not, no great harm done. We start at the sea lock at Corpach on the West side. Just around the corner, beyond the lighthouse, ships would come into the loch to load timber from the forests nearby. But in this case it is a fishing boat, the Smallwood, which is coming into the lock. Looking for lobsters, and having gone aground, she is going across to the East coast, for better luck. In her bridge, the skipper has a print out of his sonar, which shows a large dark shape far below on Loch Ness. Was it Nessie? or a shoal of fish? He thinks it is Nessie. He says he thinks it is Nessie.The Smallwood, a trawler built of steel in Ramsey, Isle of Man in 1966 had had successful days -" in 1984 Smallwood and Bahati hauled 1800 boxes of cod. They had to tow the net into Stonehaven and it took 30 men 3 days to gut them all." By 1991 she no longer appeared in the registers. Locking up with Smallwood in the Corpach flight, the Vic 32. Built in 1943 by Dunstans of Thorne, one of the 63 VIC type puffers built for the Ministry of War Transport on the lines of the Lascar of 1939. A steam lighter powered by a water tube boiler, she is thought to have worked out of Corpach for a while, taking ammunition from barges and supplying the Atlantic fleet at St Christopher's naval base. Also at Scapa Flow delivering aviation spirit, and as a day boat at Rosyth until sent to Inverkeithing in the 1960s for scrapping. Bought by Keith Schellenberg to serve his private island, and then by Nick Walker who operated her from 1975 to 2002. With a crew of mate, cook, engineer and general help, he took hundreds of people, steam enthusiasts and some not quite enthusiasts, all around the Western Isles and up and down the Caledonian Canal in clouds of sooty black smoke. A master at melding people together, he had to be. In 2002 he gave the Vic 32 to the Puffer Preservation Trust and I believe she is still operational as the last steam puffer. And passing along the canal, just after the last castiron swing bridge in its two halves, a bright red hulled fishing boat the Green Brea. Built in 1973 as the Laurisa BA145 by Herd & McKenzie at Buckie for one Jimmy Gibson, a herring trawler of 54 feet, powered by a 230 hp Gardner diesel, of wood. Of her, said that we can now put a man on the moon but we cannot make the likes of her. A photo of her launch. She lasted in to this century and to I think 2010. Right, that will do for now. If there is interest, I will go on a bit further.

We were in Brum over the same period, and did a quick run around the Black Country ring over a few days before we went back down to Droitwich. Brum was quiet at both ends of the period we were out. Quiet at every mooring we stopped at, space on the VMs at all the 'honey spot ' locations. As others have said, Easter was early this year, the weather was a bit pants. Busiest day was coming down Tardebigge when all the ABC boats from Worcester were on the way up, but I reckon that only amounted to about 10-12 boats over 2 days. Most of the Black Prince boats were still in at Stoke Prior. I chatted to the staff whilst we were hovering waiting for the lock and they said they had very few boats out or booked so far this year.

Hey Sorry- it is the stop solenoid- 😆 just testing. It is to the right and tucked under part of the engine.

I would say that the K&A was the most travelled, perhaps the most moored.

As one of those young whippersnapper new liveaboards people love to moan about, I'd say we've done pretty OK over the last 90 days...

I think this might be a good year for the Rochdale, we have been seeing a boat most days recently. The rumours that the Rochdale is about to close (from this forum?). have possibly inspired a few boats to do it while they can 😀. We are down in Tod for a week or two (cheap beer Tuesday at the Lion) and I suspect there are a few more boat movements here than the summit suggesting that some boats turn rather than risking Manchester. Of the boats that I have spoken to at the summit most said that the Manchester 18 was hard work and unpleasant, but few have said it was a nightmare, so maybe things are improving.

I suspect it will bash into a more rounded shape with a lump hammer, thats what we were advised to do recently with a tipcat fender? We have some car tyre cut up across the tyre and attached onto the front of the fender so the tyre tread runs up and down the front of the bow and thus when we seldom touch the bow on the top gate when ascending. This seems to give it some additional protection, and may reduce the chances of getting stuck on bolts . Ive seen a few boats with that set up. However your fender has a nice section that would be covered by such a tyre, which you may prefer not to do.

Yes, exactly, why replace the possibly undersized chain with strong chain and then insert a weak link of unknown strength. I'd just coat the existing links with paint, and attach with whatever linkage you have to hand. It can be redesigned at a later date if necessary. Personally I'd rather use a bit of cord rather than cable ties, easier to cut should that be necessary. I'd say that fender looks a bit undersized, have a look at other boats of the same prow design and see what they have come up with. In my opinion the main fender function is to prevent you catching on lock doors, which can have several designs to catch the unwary.

As did ours. I would absolutely say that a sacrificial link (cable tie) saved us from a potentially serious incident.

Mine attached itself to a bolt sticking out so I don’t think it could have rolled out of the way.

^^^^ then open the gate paddle on the opposite side of the lock and it will continue to hold the boat on that side - by then you can start on the other ground paddle and gate paddle.

I set this up about a year ago so thought I would share Cost is anything from £0 (if you already have a mobile contract with a reasonable amount of data and a decent signal so you can leave your phone against a window and piggy back off the hotspot with your firestick) up to about £200 if you get a B535 router, an external poynting directional anena with a pole mount and/or maybe a omni directional antena + whatever data sim package(s) you go for. 5g ready equipment costs a bit more I just pop the sim from my phone in the router when onboard and use the phone conected to the router wifi for calling with whatapp for making calls and texts. Its a bit of a faff to do but in reality takes seconds I know continuous cruisers who work online with a sim for every network as the coverage really varies wherever you are. In our old marina Vodafone was the best, but we moved elsewhere and EE is pretty much the only network with a decent sinal where we are. The cellmapper.net website can tell you where the masts that service where you are moored and the direction they cast the signal and network The opensignal.org website and app can also tell you what speeds to expect and where to point your phone or aerial. The omnidirectional aerial will give a poorer signal than a directional one (assuming the directional one is pointing the right way) and can pick up interference but is a lot less faff and often is good enough to stream. The Fast.com website to see what speeds you are actually getting. 5Mbps plus is usually good for streaming, you can get away with less but it tends to buffer more in my experience. 30Mbps or more would cover you for streaming in 4k if that is your thing.