oarfish

Unpassable from today, someone got stuck and the rest had to go back up the flight. Nice work with the spray foam

We did our RYA helmsman round there 7! years ago and I remember our skipper telling us this was going to happen. Currently stuck up there and will hopefully get through next week. There are worse places to be trapped I guess.

We are b2b and deal with major utilities. Happy to offer advice on a personal level though. Smart meter payment is something we are looking at, they are unfortunately a closed system for security reasons though. Without cooperation from the installing utility (and various levels of certification) you won't get the cryptographic keys to access the network. Here's a demo of our (Hackathon, not yet production) voice enabled smart meter payment system. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRv9bpPILdc

If you already have wifi, you don't need additional SMS / mobile at all. A simpler networking design would be to use MQTT and a cloud service like AWS IoT / Azure / etc. Protocol uses little bandwidth and for hobbyist levels of traffic would be free. That way you can easily address your devices individually without messing about with additional sim cards etc. Disclaimer - I do this for a living https://presciense.com/.

Wouldn't stop in New Islington, but mostly due to experiencing the joys of the marina when we started boating 5! years ago. Probably moored in worse places. Telford basin is ok, and there's plenty above and below the lock in Castlefield. Not sure how much fun the enforcement is in Castlefield this year as we went up the Huddersfield instead.

Bridgewater is a bit of a motorway, nice and deep.

Thanks

Not bothered. Try polishing the bloody thing. Also need to sand and oil 10 feet at the back where it's weathered. Yachts are similarly woody i guess, but there you need furniture that you are not going to impale yourself on

Time between getting the boat bug and that coming on the market was < 6 months. All moved quickly, handily we took to the life quite well

NB version of the mostly Thames based death star sized WB. That one is ..V2, I bought V1. http://kateboats.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/valhalla.pdfmade quite a few changes since then, stove etc. Yep, summerish last year did the L&L, probably back that way via huddersfield narrow in a couple of months. Germanic black letter font uses W for V, I went sans serif to lower the Hitler level slightly. Newer photo, from the upper Trent last year. Walk on solar panels, new steel hatch and a central stove.

Valhalla is a mullet, goth party on the outside, white ash and reverse layout on the inside. We do have fitted bookshelves and a .conning tower that turns it into a sort of hemi-trad with additional storage space.

El cheapo 3w handheld will do the job yes, you don't need DSC or anything fancy. It's good fun, and not scary at all once you get out there.

Got up to about 15mph over water speed on a spring last year. Quite a trip, 44 miles in a day's boating is a record.

Macclesfield was of course, 1 day / 3 days with no winter extension. I uncharitably assumed the reasons had little to do with contention and more with the neighbours.

We use our sailing oilies, probably a little overkill for most circumstances but hard to beat for actually keeping you dry in hours of hammering rain.

> Which side of Lock 92 - the Rochdale Canal side or the Bridgewater Canal side? Rochdale side, the pound just above Castlefield basin. > Does he work for the Bridgewater Canal / Peel Holdings? Is there anything he has actually done wrong? He was apparently put in charge of enforcement, he also runs Preston Brook marina. Apparently he's pissed a lot of people off, but he was reasonable to me last year after I explained that I was happy to pay my way.. He told me that he had issues with CRT boats using the Bridgewater to evade CRT enforcement and that people from the ship canal were getting involved. > Is it true that with a CRT licence you can only be on the Bridgewater for 7 days IN ONE YEAR ??? Yes, unfortunate but if you are using it for transit that isn't a problem. Main issue I have is the unclear mooring rights even if you pay the 40.

Situation by lock 92 looks pretty dire TBH. Colony of apparently non moving boats with pins hammered between the cobblestones, crap over the towpath. A more visible and less emotive target for a council crackdown than the vagrants on the opposite bank. Not doing us any favours. The northwest is easy mode for continuous cruising while being able to commute to a regional capital compared to much of the country, even if you feel the need to dodge Sonny to get to the T&M. I have no problem with the charges to stay on the BW, assuming they are fairly enforced - you can get the whole length without touching the sides in a day.

If you are travelling out of manned lock hours, no. But it's probably best to pay up and see the river in daylight.

We were logged more times during 2 months in central London than 2 years on the rest of the system. It's enough to believe I really do have a stealth boat.

Traffic is one of the more intimidating things about big rivers. There are a few open AIS -> web gateways you could possibly integrate. Not sure how much traffic the Trent sees any more - only been as far down as Keadby, and it was clear but it would be nice to know if there was several thousand tonnes of metal parked up near the lock. Nice project.

Get a dongle / router with external antenna if you can, makes a huge difference. Far more so than the difference between carriers. From near Midland Chandlers in Braunston:

Saw someone do it on the upper Thames on the way to Lechlade, they ploughed straight into the bank after I had passed them with a good 30 foot clearance.

Is Crusty Island still populated? The terrible drumming is enough to put anyone off overstaying.

Was there December - Feb this year. Pretty much deserted you could go up and down the Pontcysyllte all day. Only place that was crowded was Trevor and that was just empty hire boats. Still has 48 hour mooring in most places due to Waffen SUCC but we were not even logged. Didn't try further up than Trevor because of our draught - we couldn't get into the back wharf there. It's really quite pretty with the leaves down and a bit of snow.

Why would anyone overstay in Loughborough? We got stoned from speeding towpath motorbikes on Sunday. As for CRT's data collection, I have been waiting over a month for my logs this time. The last lot they sent me were pretty inaccurate, especially given we act more like filthy bridgehoppers in winter. I think we were logged more times in central London over a couple of months than the next 12 in the rest of the country. If they are going to play Gestapo they could at least be efficient.