colinwilks

The late Ben Selfe's book "Knots for the Cut" is a pretty good place to start. It covers both the decorative and the practical, although of course the beauty is that most narrow boat ropework is both.

The sale is of the freehold, for which the leaseholder (Cannock Council) will pay you a ground rent of a few quid a year. Their leasehold is for a period of 250 years from 1983, so you'll probably be a bit past it by the time you get full use of the land back in your hot and sticky. Could be a good investment for your great, great etc etc grandchildren though.

If you're not over confident on rivers I think I'd join the Thames at Oxford via Isis Lock rather than Duke's Cut. There are some quite tight bends on the Thames south of the junction, with buoyed channels and plenty of overhanging trees to clear everything off the cabin top if you get it wrong. There are good moorings below Osney Bridge, with a nice gastro pub at the south end, just above the lock.

I measured the tanks on the Large Northwich Nuneaton last year and came to a figure of 600 litres total for the two tanks. Interestingly, 2/3rds of the fuel is held in the "coffins" under the engine room floor and only 1/3rd in the wedges that sit upright in the corners.

With CRT owning the property and so being responsible for a listed building, I think it's great that external funding has been found for this project. This building is interesting from a heritage point of view, but hardly critical to the continuance of the network overall, so if funds are not being diverted from direct canal infrastructure maintenance to fettle this old store house, I applaud it.

Greenlaw is for sale with ABNB if you're after a converted big Woolwich. http://www.abnb.co.uk/boat_pages/2827web/2827mobile.php?BoatID=2827

Thanks very much for the advice. I think the bottom line is that it's always easier if you have another pair of hands! Had hoped I was missing a trick, but on balance will carry on doing it the way that's familiar, and which does make clothing up on your own quick and easy. Hoping to borrow a copy of the DVD "Topcloth and Tippet" from a friend, so perhaps that will have some gems.

I'm sure you're right. The rolling does tend to be more folding short lengths over each other due to the stiffness of the material, but the end product is ideal for putting the cloths back on since it wants to unfurl in the right way so this is easy to achieve single handed. The trick I'm looking for is getting the cloths folded up in the first place on your tod!

Does anybody have a clever way of doing this which is easy to do single handed? The method I use to take the topcloths off (usually with two people) is: 1 - Having folded the tippet out of the way, fold the gunwale edges of the topcloth over to the opposite edge of the top plank from both sides. (Three thicknesses of material on the top plank) 2 - Do the same thing again with the doubled cloths, which gives a seven ply folded cloth only a little wider than the top plank. 3 - Roll the cloths in from both ends along the top plank so you end up with two Swiss rolls. This method produces a bundle that is easy to handle and easy to redeploy by yourself by rolling it back along the top plank and dropping the sides down, but it isnt so easy to fold the cloths up single handed by this method, which really needs somebody at each end. Ive done it by myself in calm conditions, but there was more leaping from one end to the other than Id have liked. I dont like dragging the whole thing off onto the towpath, where it picks up mud, grit and dog poo. Any cunning ideas out there?

Hello Tony I now have an unwanted D5W which undoubtedly has some bits in working condition. You are welcome to come and dig over the bones if you want! I have kept mine going for a number of years and it was with very mixed feelings that I finally decided to replace it. We moor on the Ashby and live in Leeds. Let me know if I can help. Colin

H. Bowers in Stoke on Trent are familiar with the D5W. They got our 20 year old D5W going for not much money, although I have now got a brand new Webasto in the engine room waiting to go in since our D5W blower motor went phut. After eight years the only consistent issue I have identified is that D5Ws are extremely sensitive to voltage drop. Only suggestion I have is have you tried swapping the ecu with the working one you have on the boat?

I think Tam's right that we're a much more disparate group than the working boat community was. I have had a number of conversations about the route out of Birmingham via Camp Hill with a view to tying up at Catherine de Barnes or "Katy de Barnes" for the night. Checking the route south in Canalplan I noticed that C de B was not listed alphabetically. I suggested an amendment to Canalplan and it was implemented the same day. I wonder if a dynamic repository such as Canalplan could/should become the modern replacement for the word of mouth that our working boater forebears built up and which is now in danger of fading into obscurity?

There is a recording of Joe Skinner in the exhibit of the remains of Friendship at Ellesmere Port Museum in which he refers to the builders of Friendship as being "Sephtons, near Hawkesbury Stop".

[quote name="Kitten Sniffer" post="1670903" timestamp="1444676499 Tom- I'm probably being dense but please expand on your thermostat thoughts. One of the reasons I was thinking of a small dedicated inverter for the fridge is that I can fit a 30 amp timer switch. My large inverter has a 400 amp fuse and 70mm cable- try finding a timer switch that could handle that load that isn't seriously industrial... Not a thermostat, but would allow the fridge to work hard for an hour then rest for two or three whilst the power trickles into the batteries. I'm still chasing Samsung technical to find out the start up volt/watt/ampage that might kaibosch the idea anyhoo.. . Your inverter may well be different of course, but we have a Sterling 3kW inverter which has the facility for remote switching on/off, all the relays for kicking in the high current DC being internal. We don't use this facility but I have found Sterling's technical support very helpful, as well as being prepared to discuss stuff they haven't sold you in the first place. Their number is 01905 771771

I have just been given the six part set of this story of Graham Booth's build of his boat "Rome". I think it was an insert in the Waterways World magazine in the early nineties and so has a mild historical interest today. I have a duplicate copy of Chapter 2 "Hunt for an Engine", which I am happy to post to any anorak out there desperate to complete their set. It is interesting to note how little has changed over the intervening quarter century, although the build cost for his 60' Les Allen shell was £13,600!

Apologies, if there was an "Irony (repeats)" section I'd have posted it there. Perhaps I should have read the sanity clause in the user agreement.

Since these two types of tow path users are frequently the subject of quite animated conversations on here, I thought people might enjoy this:

Thanks everyone, Warwickshire Fly no longer sell diesel, Stockton Top aren't there Saturdays, so it's Calcutt for us. Off round London, so wanting to avoid southern prices.

Grateful for any advice about cheapest place to fill up between Warwick and Oxford.

Add the two figures together by converting both into furlongs (miles x 8) + furlongs. This result is your data column. In the miles column have int(data column/8), gives miles as an integer. In the separate furlongs column have data column - (miles column x 8) gives the remainder in furlongs. Got to say I agree with John above though!

In the continuing debate about the merits of the weed hatch versus the expertly wielded cabin shaft, there is a third option. I was chatting with a recently retired working boater the other day whose practice was to rig a line between the stern dollies of his large Woolwich and use this to suspend himself alongside the counter. Once he had got his ear flat on the water he was able to reach the propeller shaft and attack any rubbish that had failed to succumb to his cabin shaft.

The well known and very useful canal planning program http://canalplan.org.uk/ provides latitude and longitude if you export a route as a csv file. Whether he would share his dataset or not is another matter of course.

Until the moment I read that Molesworth and "How to be Topp" had completely slipped my mind. Thank you for unearthing a happy memory!

I'm impressed and intrigued that you have got this to the working prototype stage, but not sure why you think lifting your boat with a chain hoist is less likely to damage the boat, its environment or yourself than finding a quiet lock and draining it down by a foot would be?

Thanks for this. Incidentally, the latest BBC iPlayer Radio app now allows downloading as well as streaming of programmes, which is great on the boat where the signal is usually very hit and miss.