Jump to content

Dav and Pen

PatronDonate to Canal World
  • Posts

    1,462
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Dav and Pen

  1. The original lifts in Belgium were closed for a long while after an accident with the bottom lift. The caisson started to go up went the Peniche was about half way out, the boat was broken in half and the lift was eventually stripped right down and rebuilt by the Eiffel company.

    We did a couple of coal runs on the weaver selling mainly to the lock keepers around 1978 and loaded the first load near Harecastle tunnel and the second load on the weaver. That load came from the forest of dean as the NCB were having a dispute with the miners and the pits were closed. I don’t remember any payment for the lift so maybe commercial traffic was ecempt.

  2. When we had our commercial NBs the 15 ton calculation for zero vat was very close for joshers but the big Northwich and woolwich made it with a bit over. When we had work done some yards accepted them ok but others we had to give a they had trouble with the vat man. My Dutch barge was well inside the rules but I had to send all details to the maker of a new prop so they could check. My advice is do

    not let the vat man know by raising this question.

  3. 5 minutes ago, David Mack said:

    As a teenager I had a holiday job in a local hotel kitchen. The stock pot sat permanently at the back of the cooker hob, never boiled but kept warm by the heat from the adjacent gas rings and the oven below, then cooling down overnight. All sorts of food waste went into it - bones, fat, skin, meat and vegetable trimmings, eggshells etc. Periodically a ladleful of the lukewarm liquid would be added to whatever dish the chef was making that day. But as far as I know, nobody suffered from salmonella!

    This sounds a bit like my cousins steam bath for the pig swill and they did well on it.

  4. Had first canal boat in 1965 and progressed through 5 others including ex commercials until 2001 when we gave up on the canals as the enjoyment was spoilt for us by how busy it had become (even worse now) and brought an old Dutch barge in Belgium. We had 18 years on the continent spending all the summer there until both the maintenance of the barge and madams health made us decide to finish. This was just as well as things have turned out as she now needs a wheelchair to get around. We had brought the barge from someone who had lived on it until his wife died and it had a wheelchair lift from the galley up into the wheel house but the rarely went anywhere by then.

    Enjoyed all my boating life and miss it every day.

  5. As a Deck apprentice on my first ship the third mate told me to get a small tin of enamel paint from the store man. He came from Orkney and pronounced it enaminal paint in a very broad accent when I said this to the store man he said we don’t have that so back I went to the bridge told the mate and he said you know enaminal paint for the bath. Job done. 

  6. I first went through the Panama when still a deck apprentice and it was run by the Americans. The ships were much smaller then but being on tankers we never shared a lock. The first timers were wound up by the crew about the mules that pulled the ship through the locks and were given carrots to feed them! We had to anchor in the lake overnight as tanker movement was not allowed at night, lots of the crew got ready for a swim until the pilot said he’d seen alligators in there recently. A few years ago we went through on the sailing ship Star Flyer from the pacific end and shared the locks with a reffer ship. The new locks were being built alongside and they are big enough for much larger ships but do not use the mules instead they have a tug which goes in the lock with them, an accident waiting to happen.

    There is a proposal to build a sea level canal through Nicaragua financed by the Chinese.

    P1000089.jpeg

  7. I have never worn a life jacket on the canals or even the English rivers but when we had the NB in Ireland we did wear self inflating ones whilst on the big lakes for if someone fell in it would be some time before the boat could get back alongside the casualty. For our camping boats we supplied the passengers with the old fashioned jackets and some of the kids wore them all the time. After we brought the barge in Belgium Life jackets were compulsory equipment for all crew and in the big river locks there are notices requiring them to be worn and after the regulations for bigger boats came in we had to have a notice in the wheelhouse giving the actions to be taken in the event of a man over board

    and we also had to have  a method of recovering the person. In addition two life buoys and a buoy with a flashing light to be thrown in with the lifebuoy. The life jackets could be inspected at any time along with fire extinguishers by the river police. 
     

  8. A lot depends on the conditions you are painting in, ie under cover or outside. I have only ever used 2 pack on the hull of my barge whilst on an open drydock and it was going off before I got to the end. For the topsides I have always used the traditional enamel top coat after a coat of etching primer followed by primer, undercoats and the topcoat. It is also easier to paint out scratch marks etc which are inevitable . I have owned boats for over 50 years and always painted them myself but I did start working life as a deck apprentice with Shell Tankers which consisted doing an awful lot of chipping and painting.

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.