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Only because after Terry Darlington made it sound dangerous in his book (it wasn't), no-one would insure narrowboats crossing the Channel any more. We did take Snail out to sea in Europe a few times where she behaved very well, even in chop. Unlike Chris Coburn who has achieved all kinds of exploits in his very ordinary nb, we had ours especially made with a 15mm bottom plate, ballast cut to fit so they couldn't slide, 67hp engine, PRM260 gear box, large prop (22x22), double sized skin tanks, all portholes, trad stern, tender that was always available for use if needed, easy to tow along behind on the big European waterways. Snail easily makes 10 kts, (we tested this on the Gent-Terneuzen Canal,built in 1823 which is 200m wide and capable of accomodating ships up to 125,000 tons, with a draught of up to 12.5 m) not a lot of use now we've come back to the UK canals. My blog and book illustrates what's achievable.

The Tunnel leading up to Tuel Lane Deep Lock (Sowerby Bridge, Rochdale Canal) had some sort of comms system so the Lock keepers could signal to waiting boats (as boats should not enter the tunnel while the lock is emptying). It broke. Now the lock keepers have a whistle, they bend down towards the tunnel and blow the whistle and the sound travels through the tunnel quite well.

I didn't carefully avoid your question I meticulously ignored it.

I know where potable water comes from and the processes involved in ensuring that it is to a safe standard. It is much more involved than a few filters on a boat and it is constantly tested.

Mornington Crescent 🤣

When you say "that amount of rust" are we all talking about the rust shown in the OP's photo or have I missed something? If the bearing housing is/was loose and there's rust underneath then that's not good but still, the rust doesn't look that excessive to me. Personally if I was venturing onto tidal waters I'd be more concerned about things like whether my anchor warp was long enough, sludge in my fuel tank that might get churned up and block the fuel filter, etc. I'd also be checking things like alternator belts as I had one snap once on the tidal Thames and only knew when the water pump stopped spinning and I got an engine overheating warning alarm.

Water was so low at the T&M summit last week that I couldn't get into one of the Stoke locks, and it has rained a bit lately. The CRT bloke who came to sort it out blamed vandals for opening paddles overnight - I did point out that the gates on the flight leaked so much that a lock someone had just emptied (and mistakenly shut the gates on me as I approached it), was half full again by the time I'd walked up to it. Others on the flight, filled by someone going up just before me, were almost empty by the time I reached them. It really doesn't bode well for the summer. Until a few years ago there were anti vandal locks on the top couple, too, presumably taken off because vandalism isn't really a problem.

its 1 year ago today we laid the baseplate and whilst the first 6 months produced quick results, the last half of the year have been thwarted by rain, wind, floods and generally pretty poor weather. So what to report..... Well, we found her original stern dollies and rudder. Sadly they're on a bota on the K and A, made from the stern of the GUCCCo butty Satellite, called Adrastea, so they won't be reunited, and the unique Anderton profiling on the rudder top has been reprofiled to a more standard semicircle. So, we have machined an unmatched pair of dollies as they originally were, and also made a new T stud as the location of that is also unknown. We've also fabricated the majority of the deck beam on the bench, to weld into the deck beam frame which is where the first large wooden knees would have been under the deck board. The other job we squeezed in between rain clouds is starting to make the templates for sections of the hull we can't achieve with parallel planking. We can but hope the weather will somewhat improve over the coming weeks....... we're not holding our breath. Photos showing progress as of today

On that, I was idly looking around a car lot flogging VW campers. I looked at a particularly nice one with £7,995 on the screen and I thought blimey that looks good value. Then I looked again and it was actually £79,995, lol!

Ah, almost every sensible contribution to a debate needs a bit of racism to spice it up, doesn't it?

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...

As a matter of interest what type of welder are you going to. Use for the planks ? ark / or mig you are making a wonderful job of this build. You should be proud of your self Graham

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.

Ebikes, escooters and all motorised transport should be treated like motorbikes , which is what they are. Numberplates and registered to an owner, who is liable for damage no matter who is riding. No reason why a licence shouldn't be required to ride them, either. Just because a government can't be bothered, doesn't mean it isn't a simple solution. They pass enough daft laws - if they can make it illegal to walk slowly down a road, they could sort ebikes.

Good to see that the front fender Iain made for Copperkins all those years ago is still in existence!

If you have the password and your email address for 3 go to my 3 for everything including your gorilla bite usage for your conracts.

Same, I've never been. We went to Ypres last year and I've sort of fallen for Belgium a bit. Last year was to look around the battlefields, I've promised not to do that this time around. We've already booked for next year, staying near Ypres and we're going to watch some cycle races.

It doesn't require net energy to make it. The production of biofuels such as HVO is still energy positive. If carbon neutral energy is used to make it, then it is indeed carbon neutral. Let's say a factory produces 1000 kJ of biofuel, and it uses 100 kJ of dirty energy to make it. The factory produced 900 kJ of net energy, 90% carbon neutral. If the factory uses 100 kJ of that biofuel's energy to make the next batch of 1000 kJ of biofuel, it has now made carbon-neutral biofuel. (If you want to be extremely technical, you can say it's now 99% carbon neutral, and the next batch will be 99.9%... so you can mathematically say it tends towards carbon neutrality. But, I think, this is pedantry rather than a helpful classification of the fuel by carbon impact). I'm feeling confused by how you think my use of the term carbon neutral would be used to describe batteries. Would you be willing to explain what you mean so that my need to understand can be met? I can understand this point of view, and there's definitely a practical aspect to this as we make the necessary changes - for now, most lorries use dirty diesel, and so transporting biodiesel by lorry means the practical usage of biodiesel isn't really carbon neutral. However, it is more helpful and more accurate to point out that while the biodiesel itself is in fact carbon neutral, it's the transportation that is the problem in this case. All the carbon sequestered in it was captured from the atmosphere, not extracted from the ground - and releasing it back to the atmosphere should not be considered a failure or a tragedy. The releasing of carbon captured recently should be considered a neutral activity. There are lots of reasons why biodiesel isn't the complete answer (land use change, expense, local pollution) but carbon emissions aren't one of them. The carbon emitted during production and transportation applies to dinodiesel too.

Dave Cottle 07729 129493 but don't say the number came from me. Their engines are usually installed by Chris Jones 07887 565531

Was it the truck carrying the blue signs that broke the bridge?

I guess you can call it this. I would call it fossil fuel companies promoting a misleading use of the term. Perhaps you'll find it more agreeable if I talk about carbon that's part of the carbon cycle, and carbon that's not (mineral carbon). I'm trying to shift a perspective that is common and unhelpful. No, because a forest is part of the carbon cycle and always will be, the mine is not and never will be. We should stop entertaining the idea of "offsetting" ancient carbon with carbon that's part of the carbon cycle, because it's just not realistic. The quantities are just too great and the land required is just too huge. Plus it involves trusting that the forest will remain in perpetuity. Cutting a forest down is not a neutral activity, but I would call that land use change. Burning the wood (or letting it decompose) is part of the carbon cycle. If you replant the wood continuously to replace the chopped down wood, there is no land use change, and this is a carbon neutral activity. As it shouldn't be, because we're just releasing the same carbon that we removed from the atmosphere by growing our biofuel (food). It's carbon cycle carbon. Of course if you count the agricultural machinery, the transport, etc, then no it wasn't carbon neutral, but it's unhelpful to call food carbon emitting when it's not the food's "fault", but the fossil fuel's "fault". You're pointing the finger at the wrong things. Food itself can't be anything other than carbon neutral because humans are fueled by the very same energy chemical carbon bonds that were created by the sun converting carbon dioxide into food. It does, but in theory, if you were to fuel the ships with those wood chips, then it would be carbon neutral. In the context of an extremely integrated carbon based energy economy, I guess not, but the point of the term (for me at least) is to separate out those things that would be carbon neutral if not supported by a whole bunch of peripheral carbon releasing activities. Otherwise the term isn't helpful. If I grow a broccoli in my garden, eat it, then breathe out carbon dioxide, this is a carbon neutral activity. You could of course argue that because I drove to the shop in my ICE car to get the seeds, that it isn't, and while you're technically correct, it's not helpful because it's the DRIVING THE ICE CAR that's the issue, not the growing of the broccoli. Fossil fuel companies know that conflating the two helps their case, if you can't even grow a broccoli without carbon, then what's the point in even trying to reduce carbon emissions. Heck we even breathe out carbon (!) I couldn't agree more, but that's beyond the scope of what we can do personally.

Given that the HNC was reopened on the cheap and it's now 25 years old and hasn't been properly maintained due to lack of money -- like the rest of the system -- how do you think any heavyweights could have done any better? Especially given the tiny number of boats who use it, so it's well down any "fix it first" priority list compared to canals with 20x more traffic? The Rochdale has pretty much the same problem for the same reasons, which is why both canals keep having so many closures... 😞

Sure you can have an opinion, but it carries more weight if you back it up with some actual facts. What have CART installed, how much did it actually cost, and what was the reason for doing it? Facts not hearsay, speculation or whinging... 😉 If the existing system worked fine and the new one is no better and was a vanity project for no good reason, then I'll agree with you that it was a waste of money. But I doubt that this is actually the case, CART have far better things to spend scarce cash on...

Ooooo! West Wight. Be careful. They eat their young the other side of Newport. 😀

You can unscrew the stubby aerials and connect an external one, you may need new adapters though as they will be SMA-Female on the back of the router. You'll need to connect to the router with a laptop/tablet/phone to switch the setting to external aerial too for best results (connect to wifi, type 192.168.1.1 in a browser window). Don't think the Huawei app gives you that much control if memory serves. I have the same router paired with an external Poynting aerial.

Marsh Lock on the Thames yesterday morning🙂

Hump back rail bridge. By Hennessy - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=601984 If you were really going to fix Vazon in place, you could replace Keadby lock with a new one up from Vazon and make the cut between there and the river deeper and tidal, so not totally impractical.

i have this semi-trad as a vector drawn in Illustrator that i did to play with colour schemes, not massively accurate for shapes but gives an idea

Perhaps you should invite them to deal with the issues as a matter of goodwill if it is outside the warranty period, and in exchange, you will show goodwill, by not attending the Crick Boat Show next year, with a selection of photos for prospective customers to look at.