IanD
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Posts posted by IanD
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9 minutes ago, John Brightley said:
I think you've been very lucky. Most experienced boaters wouldn't do it. It's simple to take the rope off the stud and coil it away out of the way to avoid any issues.
Indeed it is. It's also then easy for less experienced boaters -- particularly when they need to throw a line in a hurry -- to forget to drop the loop end back over the stud before throwing it... 😉
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13 minutes ago, DShK said:
That doesn't mean it can't happen though. Some people have centre lines that can reach the prop too. I just don't like it, a rope around the prop could be very bad and doing small things to make that much less a worry is worth it imo. I can be a bit clumsy myself so it makes sense for me to avoid these things. My mooring lines float and my bow line for hauling the boat through bridges etc can't reach the prop either (I've already been in situations where if it could have, it may well have done).
Nice, I'll definitely check that out when I'm at Leicester, thanks!
From there you can easily get all the way through Leicester to somewhere else nice the following evening -- or vice versa if you're going the other way. Unless you actually *want* to stop in Leicester, personally I wouldn't recommend it but others have said its OK... 😉
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11 minutes ago, DShK said:
I'm just trying to be prepared as I work from the boat. If something goes terribly wrong I could be very out of pocket (as a contractor).
My feeling is that a lot of this info you can get from google maps these days!
Hey! Nice! My thinking is to go clockwise because I've already been to Leicester and back, but with a friend. It was hard work, you're right. I figure I'd like to "tread new ground" and also get a bit of a rhythm going before getting to that bit again. Good to know about castle gardens and Friars Mill. We actually stopped at Memory Lane Wharf (not really a wharf, just a small offshoot with a pontoon). That was near Limekiln, but seemed a bit more secure in that you can only get there with a code to a padlock (and passing through a construction site, weirdly). Bit of an odd affair, we were lucky there was a friendly boater there already who knew the lock (I think he was a CCer who just stayed in Leicester).
The Soar seems to go into flood if someone pisses in it? What are you supposed to do if it goes into flood during the night?
Thanks! Looking to leave in the next couple weeks all going to plan. I don't like it too sunny though, when we went to Leicester and back in a week before, I ended up looking like a cooked turkey. My skin turned to leather. Leicester makes me a bit wary, just due to it being a city. A boater I spoke to when I got there said someone had tried to break into his boat. I think it's a case of, don't leave the boat unattended if you've been there a night or two already...
Ooh I wasn't aware of this resource, thanks! I am very excited to make use of a fuel boat for the first time. I am worried envy might get the best of me and I might commit a tiny bit of piracy.
Following local recommendation (a friend who lives just round the corner) we moored in the outskirts of Leicester just above Packhorse Bridge (to stay off the Soar which was running high at the time), nice safe quiet moorings and a short walk to the excellent Black Horse. I seem to remember Aylestone Farm Shop was worth a call too. And the walk over the bridge and the water meadows is rather fine, if it's not raining...
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12 minutes ago, enigmatic said:
The one time my boat was at risk I had annoying modern paddles that had to be very slowly and laboriously wound down
(It was a stupid gate design holding my bow down rather than a cilling, but the remedy is the same)
I hate to think what would happen if someone cilled a boat somewhere like Ashline lock on the Middle Level (50 turns on the paddle with a long armed windlass)
suspect a proportion of cillings happen because even though boaters spot it and attempt the right remedy, stuff like stiff paddle gear, very leaky locks, quirky paddle designs that people don't understand whether they're open or closed and anti-vandal devices mean they can't stop it quickly enough.
We got hung up on a protruding stone in 1986 at Marsworth when the locks had hydraulic paddles, couldn't drop them quickly (many turns to wind them down) and came close to sinking. I've hated hydraulic paddles with a vengeance ever since... 😞
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18 minutes ago, magnetman said:
It could become a hot topic once electric propulsion is mandated on canal boats.
No problem for big old diesel lumps but electric is a whole nother kettle of fish.
Long swims are a matter of diminishing returns; going from horribly blunt/short ones to maybe 10' or so (IIRC that's what TT used on my boat) makes a big difference to wake generation and how easily the hull slips through the water, going beyond this (e.g. to 15') less so.
For most boats internal space is a bigger priority anyway nowadays, and swims much longer than 10' start to affect what you can fit into the cabin at the ends. Given the resteicted width/space inside a narrowboat, this doesn't seem like a good tradoff to me -- but people who want a super-elegant hull and aren't bothered about the space so much may well disagree... 😉
The Alvechurch bulbous bow was never a good idea on canals, these work best to reduce drag in deep water at one particular design speed by reducing the bow wake -- fine for oceangoing ships which spend almost all their time at a fixed cruising speed, but not for a canal boat where bow wake drag is also much smaller than skin drag or the drag caused by pushing the water back past the hull in a narrow shallow canal.
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2 hours ago, Tacet said:
Improves performance. Same as flush rivets on a Spitfire
That is my initial reaction when someone claims their boat can turn in its own length, using only propeller and rudder.
But IanD has previously posted some graphs and data suggesting that a Schilling rudder can give reverse thrust when the engine is ahead. If so, a boat turning in its own length will be more feasible.
I am genuinely interested to see how it works out on his new boat. Bollard pull (push?) might be a key indicator
A Schilling rudder should certainly be able to give pure lateral thrust, I'll try and get pull measurements to show this -- whether it will go all the way to a small reverse thrust remains to be seen, but this isn't needed.
IiRC the few people who have actually tried them on canal boats have reported very good results. With tiller steering you need less balance (about 25%) than the powered ones on ships, which use up to 40% but this would mean a tiller slamming hard over.
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52 minutes ago, Lady C said:
We chose the towpath moorings because they were more suitable for our onboard cat.
We chose them because we had to do a crew swap including luggage/doggy gear transfer to/from car, and this was easier on the towpath (car in cafe entrance).
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Thursday should be OK, Tues/Weds are the busiest days when the weekly hire boat numbers peak. When we were there in July there was space in both basin and on the towpath, though be warned about the towpath if you want a quiet lie-in, the trip boats don't exactly pass at tickover. DAMHIK...
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8 hours ago, BoatinglifeupNorth said:
I suppose if you wanted to be different while still being traditional with the blade rudder you could fit a stern thruster to go with the bow thruster.
Sure, you could spend 3x as much on something which did the same job but was more likely to get fouled if you wanted to, but a different shaped bit of metal is a simpler, more robust solution. Nobody's forcing anyone who thinks this is pointless to have one... 😉
It seems strange to me that people who think every slope and profile of their boat swim matters -- in an attempt to give something which is basically a brick in a drain some of the hydrodynamics of a ship -- don't also ask themselves why every modern ship out there has a high-lift rudder not a flat plate -- and some where low- speed manouevring is more important than drag even dare to use a fishtail/Schilling one.
But I guess the reason is that if the ODGs on the canals didn't do it, it can't possibly be worth doing, especially such a new-fangled gizmo... 🙂
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6 hours ago, GUMPY said:
But some would say it's not possible and you need a special rudder 😱🤔
Nobody would say that. But a special rudder is *better* at doing it... 😉
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7 hours ago, MtB said:
Also, when my engine goes out occasionally it is convenient to push the rudder over to its limit of almost 90 degrees, so it acts as drogue/brake to help get some way off before I hit whatever is up ahead.
Not sure I totally buy that, unless they have a flight blade (forward of the rudder stock) so long it can catch ALL of the prop flow, on both sides of the rudder stock.
I'll dig out the curves which show this when I get home -- amd I'll measure it whn my boat is in the water 🙂
They don't have to "capture" the entire flow from the prop by being the same width, so long as the water flows smoothly around the back instead of breaking away turbulently like a flat plate even the flow not covered by the rudder is deflected -- otherwide there would have to be a hole in the water...
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7 hours ago, nicknorman said:
Also on the Garrison locks, and some of these still work.
I disagree. If it were as you say, the effect would be at a maximum near the back of the lock, whereas in fact it is at a maximum near the front of the lock. With a dense fluid (the water) and much less dense fluid above (the air) the effect doesn’t require a high water velocity to create the sloped interface (and let’s bear in mind the slop is only a few degrees).
There is a general increase in level caused by the water flowing in, but then the bow dips
That's not the Bernoulli effect, which is a drop in pressure within a confined body of liquid as the velocity increases -- for example, when liquid travels through a constriction.
Wherever it happens in the lock -- front or back -- the cause is indeed a slope in the water surface which the boat slides down, but this is simply caused by the water flowing into the lock and then slowing down. You'd see the Bernoulli effect inside the ground paddle sluices if you measured the pressure inside them.
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8 minutes ago, GUMPY said:
That is true if the boat is moving forward but a stationary boat with a big rudder can turn in its own length by putting the rudder at 90deg using fwd an reverse. The rudder blocks the flow of the water to from the prop as well as pushing water out sideways. If you see what I mean
It's also not true with a Schilling rudder which can be effective up to about 75 degrees... 😉
(at which point they can provide sideways thrust only, just like a stern thruster)
But obviously there's no point doing this because a flat plate rudder was good enough in the old days... 😉
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2 hours ago, nicknorman said:
Well some of the BCN locks have multiple ground paddle outlets including behind the bottom gates. But otherwise (and I’m totally guessing!) it might be to do with the direction the water comes out of the paddle culvert. If the water comes out pointing across the lock, the flow will be turbulent, just thrash around as it bounces off the opposite wall etc, and so Bernoulli doesn’t really kick in. But if the flow is directed more along the bottom of the lock, then the flow will be more laminar and that is when you get the Bernoulli effect.
I don't think it's Bernoulli because the water speed is far too low, it's that if the paddles direct water down the lock under the boat it piles up at the bottom of the lock and lifts the stern, which pushes the boat forwards in the lock as it slides down the slope.
If you watch the level of the boat compared to the (level) joints in the stonework you can see this happen as the boat tilts up at the stern -- by which time it's often too late as the boat accelerates towards the cill... 😞
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1 minute ago, Tam & Di said:
Never had that happen. I think these terrible accidents are largely a matter of inexperience - if the boat suddenly surged backwards and I was for some reason on the counter I would know without having to think about it that the tiller would swing if I didn't keep a firm grip on it. I would almost certainly be stood in the hatches out of the arc of the tiller anyway, but I can't really think why I would be just stood on the counter in a lock.
Tam
I meant that if the boat is going backwards so the rudder hits the cill/bank/gate (which is causes these accidents) hard enough for the tiller to knock somebody overboard as it swings, if the tiller is tied and can't swing the end-on rudder has to stop 20 tons of boat in a very short distance (a fraction of an inch?), and is likely to get damaged as a result. A stern button takes up the impact by squashing by several inches, but won't usually protect a straight-ahead rudder -- because if it did these accidents wouldn't happen...
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4 hours ago, MtB said:
I agree with Tony. I think the statements by battery manus that chemistries should not be mixed is to minimise the number of guarantee claims.
Just imagine you sold a million 'drop-in' LiFePO4 batteries with built in BMS etc for £1k each.
Let's imagine the BMS you fit is not 100% perfect and (say) one in five thousand fails, leading to the battery wrecking itself. You now face claims for £200k of refunds representing a hefty chunk of the net profit from your sales operation. Or worse, let's imagine a manufacturing fault reveals itself in ALL of them after a few months.
You know perfectly well virtually all of these 'drop-in' batteries will have been fitted as parallel hybrids so you can easily deny guarantee claims by cynically putting a clause in your T&Cs saying don't do it as it may damage the battery. And so the received wisdom spreads, that is is dangerous to do.
Most of your customers will not have read the T&Cs and even those who did, will still install as parallel hybrid because it works so well and just hope for the best. I certainly do.
Even if you ignore warranty claims, with a parallel LA/LFP system built and used by somebody who hasn't got a clue -- meaning people who just see how brilliant this is on the internet, not the likes of you -- the end result is likely to be short lifetime of expensive batteries. The BMS in most (all?) drop-in LFP is designed to stop them being rapidly destroyed by over/undervoltage , but the cells aren't going to be happy if they're regularly taken up or down to these limits (e.g. daily by an alternator or MPPT), this is meant to be "emergency-only".
If you take care about how they're used -- which I'm sure you do -- then a parallel system is fine. The same isn't true for the I-haven't-got-a-clue user, of who there will be many going by the way that many boaters manage to destroy LA batteries in no time... 😞
But whatever you do to them LFP batteries (with a BMS, even an internal one) are not really dangerous, they're probably safer than LA. NMC and similar lithium chemistries are a different matter completely... 😉
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1 hour ago, John Brightley said:
Episode eight also includes a section which shows the canal children's boarding school, Wood End Hall Hostel in Erdington. Information online shows that the Hostel operated from 1951 to 1968, and by the time of its appearance in 'Flower of Gloster' only a small number of children were resident there.
That's a bit of canal history I wasn't aware of. Amazing what you can find by watching kids TV, isn't it? 🙂
Now waiting for Episode 9 to see Chocolate Charlie teaching them how to get a boat and butty through a flight of narrow locks, you could see the towline being laid out at the end of Episode 8. I predict some kind of mild peril will follow... 😉
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10 minutes ago, Tam & Di said:
We'd certainly remove the butty tiller, but we had tiller strings to it hold it straight on the motor which was the normal way to go on in my experience.
Tam
Doesn't that mean if you do get pulled backwards and hit the bank/cill/gate the rudder is more likely to get damaged/bent/unseated because it can't swing sideways out of the way? On most boats the stern button isn't long enough to protect the rudder if this happens...
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41 minutes ago, BoatinglifeupNorth said:
What do you call a modern boat?
I imagine there has been a very low percentage of completed boats being built to order in the last couple of years with a vintage engine room and back cabin. I have seen two both self fit outs and both weren’t as easy as the owners thought.
Most new boat buyers don’t want them even though they can afford them, just not practical for the lifestyle and layout they want, which seams to be mainly a reverse layout.
I suspect that's because most buyers of new boats don't have the sentimental/historic attachment to engine rooms and back cabins that some "trad-style" fans have. A reverse layout does have advantages if you want a big comfortable bed in the bows, and is more sociable for the steerer when cruising -- especially with more people on board -- because the galley and living area are at the stern.
But some people still prefer the "traditional" (non-reverse) layout -- which remember isn't really traditional, it was invented in the middle of the 20th century -- which has other advantages, especially if you want to sit in the bows or forward saloon while cruising to be a long way from the noisy engine... 😉
I can admire boats with an engine room and lots of polished brass and a boatman's cabin (and have been on them), but I wouldn't want one. And I'm sure most boaters who have them wouldn't be seen dead on a modern reverse-layout electric/hybrid like mine. Boating would be boring if everyone had the same needs and wanted the same thing... 🙂
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On 02/06/2023 at 11:31, MtB said:
Actually, all (proper) gas bottles have an emergency over-temperature pressure relief valve. Its that little amber-coloured plastic bung in the back of the brass valve. If the bottle gets dangerously hot it pops out and releases all the gas in the bottle slowly.
But this never happens in just sunlight.
Always assuming somebody who doesn't know what they're doing hasn't done a DIY refill from a big cylinder and failed to leave the required gas expansion space above the LPG... 😉
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4 hours ago, Graham and Jo said:
I am not sure which bit we are discussing! The bit at 17:09 is Oldbury locks.
Cheers Graham
The bit at 14:27 is Spon Lane locks.
Cheers Graham
They seem to magically jump form one to the other!
That's the wonder of films and editing... 😉
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Guys, don't shoot the messenger, I'm *not* saying I think this is a good idea, LFP is probably safer than LA -- but it's what has already happened in the USA, and the UK is often not far behind where things like this are concerned... 😞
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Just now, ditchcrawler said:
It was indead
An unfortunate mispeeling?
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31 minutes ago, alias said:
That isn't the full set of outcomes - stand in front of tiller in ahead and stay dry, in the example I mentioned.
I think you know perfectly well that I meant the consequences *if* you got knocked over the stern by the tiller, because that's what I actually said... 😉
(and I also thought we were going to avoid pointless needling and nitpicking on a thread about a tragic subject?)
26 minutes ago, magnetman said:It could be interesting to treat a boat as if it were a vehicle and have a warning of some sort to indicate that it is reversing.
It could be a voice or a "psssht psssht" thing or a siren.
Whatever it is it would help alert the person on the boat of potential danger.
Obviously everyone knows that reversing a narrow boat while being in the arc of the tiller is a Bad Idea but occasionally one could become complacent.
If an alarm of some sort went orf immediately as reverse was engaged it could help raise awareness at the time.
Easy thing to do.
Typo edit
Nowadays it would be very simple to trigger a quiet voice -- so it doesn't drive everyone else mad -- saying something like "Stand clear of the tiller when going astern".
Though I'm sure some boat owners -- as opposed to hirers -- would be annoyed by this and start going on about "elf'n'safety gone mad" and "nanny state again".
Even though it seems they're the ones who seem to be most likely to be killed this way... 😞
(is there any recorded case of a hire boater suffering this fate, or were they all owners?)
First "Continuous" Cruise
in General Boating
Posted
Sometimes modern technology is better, sometimes when it doesn't work paper maps are better. It's better to be open-minded and use both than insist that one is always better than the other... 😉