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Captain Pegg

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Everything posted by Captain Pegg

  1. Surely you can work that one out!!?? It's a test of logical thinking not mathematics. JP
  2. I too was puzzling over whether Athy had made a joke or had spectacularly missed the point of the Archimedes' principle. But as Athy often assures us he never misses the point of anything I assumed it was a joke. It's very easy to calculate the mass of a boat as long as you know the basic dimensions of the baseplate, the depth of the side plate and how much dry side there is along the length of the boat. Vulpes is designed to be as near as damn it 10 tonnes in fully loaded trim at which it is level in the water. It's 35' feet long so it confirms the theory of approximately 1 tonne per yard/metre. I know this because I have a print of a proper technical drawing of it dating from 1968 which is interesting in the context of another thread on here. JP
  3. No more than being a draughtsman is all about paper. The medium is pretty useless without the skill to understand what you are designing. JP
  4. I'm not buying it Dr Bob. If you were that much of a fan you would be at the game. JP
  5. Half a mark only for each of those descriptions Mike.
  6. It's certainly a food over beer kind of place. I always think of a gastropub as somewhere that serves high end food cooked by a properly good chef and I don't think the Queen's Head meets that criterion. I've eaten there a few times. It's also a pub that has pretty much rendered the original house redundant and the business end is a gigantic lean-to which doesn't do much for its character. There aren't really many locals around to drink there, my guess is that most of the clientele drive there from Redditch. They do make some effort with the beer and I had a pint of Bitter Brummie from Birmingham Brewing Co there a couple of weeks ago. It sounded promised but unfortunately it wasn't that great. Whether that was pub or product I don't know since that was the first time I have tried it. I suspect the latter so it could also be the last. One pub on the W&B that does retain it's local feel is the Boat & Railway at Stoke Prior. It's also a last night stop for hirers from Black Prince. Standard Marston's fare and you get what you pay for so it's cheap but that's OK. JP
  7. I wouldn't want to swim in canal water.
  8. The pH scale is logarithmic with means it takes large variances in acidity or basicity to make modest changes to the pH number. Urine has a pH of about 6 and seawater a pH just above 8. Groundwater is generally in the range between these values so I am pretty comfortable in suggesting that the average bit of canal water is too, which I described as "broadly neutral". That's not to say there won't be significant local and temporary variation for reasons such as you state but I don't think the average stretch of canal is normally akin to a pot of undiluted p1ss or the sea be it urban or rural. I was originally just trying to allay the fears of folk who worry that boats dissolve in water. JP
  9. No. Coatings should be applied to clean, dry parent metal wherever possible. The point is more that if you have rust patches don't mechanically remove the rust unless you subsequent apply a coating to the exposed steel as soon as possible afterwards. I was mostly responding to the notion that steel rusts significantly and quickly by pointing out that any untreated steel will appear to be corroded by nature but it isn't really a problem in the case of something like a baseplate on a boat. If you think about it there are many industrial applications where steel components and sections are used without any surface coating. JP
  10. My experience is that hire base operators know the basic condition of their local canals. They get this through feedback from hirers and also because their own staff will work their boats on the same stretches. A hirer wouldn’t need to know that things have changed to feed back that they found certain features difficult. That’s just a statement of fact that on which the past has no bearing. JP
  11. You would think with a hire base at Heyford and one in Oxford that the hire companies would be making representations to CRT because hirers would certainly feed back to the hire base if they found the going difficult. JP
  12. Things are often slower today but I think that's more about the number of boats both in terms of slowing to pass moored boats and having to wait for and re-set locks. We actually went to Oxford in October half term that year so generally quite short days. Does Oxfordshire Narrowboats send boats toward Oxford on weekend trips? JP
  13. It could but history has it that the technological advances of rolling mill controls tend to be a step ahead of standards regarding tolerance which means thicknesses are more likely to be on the lower side of nominal. Extra thickness equals extra mass and that's profit down the drain. Or perhaps more accurately it's even bigger losses. This whole debate revolves around folk assigning a level of accuracy to the hull thickness measurements that I don't believe exists. I have just posted on this subject on a similar thread elsewhere. JP
  14. Realistically, no. If you have a consistent set of readings of 3.1/3.2mm then the original plate was 1/8" thick. There may no irrefutable evidence of that but it isn't a surveyor making things up. It's also worth bearing in mind that the actual measurements received by the probe of the ultrasonic test meter will be a load of unfathomable pulse signals that a black box magically filters and applies an algorithm to which gives a lovely round number that gives folks who get their science from the internet a false sense of accuracy. Steel really doesn't rust very fast at all and even less so in a low oxygen environment such as underwater, providing that the water is broadly pH neutral which it naturally will be. It's catalysts to corrosion and nasties in the water that cause aggressive corrosion and pitting. In good conditions I would expect minimal loss of section in a plate in low oxygen conditions over 30 years. It will though look rusty on the surface because the surface of mild steel as manufactured is chemically unstable and the initial oxidisation forms a chemically stable surface. If left undisturbed it forms a layer that protects the metal beneath. JP
  15. Surely all of the Oxford is within the range of Napton based hire boats? Did Napton to Oxford and back in a weeks hire with the family in 1978. I'll bet it was harder then than it is now. The swing bridges were generally left closed and I recall one in Banbury with a busy road over it. Vague memories though as I was pretty young at the time. Hoping to make a return visit exactly 40 years later at the end of October. JP
  16. Good report on the trip and it is a great cruising ring with lots of variety. Also the best variant on the ring is probably via Stourbridge, BCLM and Old Main Line. The Queen's Head isn't really a gastropub. If it was you wouldn't have had pizza for lunch. It's an ordinary place with delusions of grandeur. However I have never had a bad meal there and it does have half decent beer. It isn't necessarily value for money though as the prices are higher than they really should be for the quality and location. That said there isn't really anywhere else on the Worcs & Birmingham below Tardebigge that I could offer as being obviously better if you want to eat as well as drink. There are many more 'genuine' places though. Above Tardebigge it's disappointing there is nothing at the top of the locks (and you must never be tempted to walk to The Tardebigge pub) but The Weighbridge is properly good with local(ish) ales and home cooked food. Shame it doesn't open until seven. I couldn't sneak a quick pint there last week when I arrived at the marina at 1830 and had to get the 1900 train back home. JP
  17. The first is close but the middle syllable is more a phonetic 'a' as taught at infant school or an 'uh' sound if you have a more pronounced midland accent. The spelling of the last syllable is archaic rather than important to pronunciation. The emphasis is on the first syllable but not in a major way. The following are all close enough phonetically. tar-duh-bigg tar-dah-bigg tar-deh-bigg JP
  18. Sounds like someone has swapped out the full bottles for a couple of empty ones just before completion of the sale. Presumably the survey was done ahead of completion and therefore before the OP took ownership. I suspect you would get a really big smell of gas if it was emitting and not lighting. That can happen if the top piece of the job isn’t seated correctly but it doesn’t sound like that is the case. JP
  19. As I said, there isn't a north and south Oxford, it's an invention. With respect to CRT I don't think they are an authority in such things. As long as what anyone calls the north Oxford is north of the south Oxford and the south Oxford is south of the north Oxford then all is good. You could call the bit between Napton and Braunston the middle Oxford if you want. Just don't call it the GU. JP
  20. It isn't just CRT's view. Braunston to Napton was built by the OCC as part of the through line from Hawkesbury to Oxford and remained in their ownership until nationalised. The distinction between north and south Oxford is of course an artificial construct in any case so there isn't a true boundary. I think technically the Grand Union doesn't even quite get as far as Braunston turn. JP
  21. You might need a big phone if you happen to be at the bottom of a River Severn lock at the time. That's the only place where I have been challenged about not displaying a licence. As a result I figured it's best to display a valid licence. JP
  22. Yes, one lock full does transit one boat in each direction. I was simply referring to the amount of water that passes through the flight irrespective of pumping. Maybe CRT want to save money on pumping or perhaps the system hasn't been coping. JP
  23. Think of it as a system and the objective is to reduce the volume of water from that used by a fixed number of boats per day when they are allowed to randomly operate the parallel locks in unrestricted fashion. The aim should be something that tends toward one lock full of water per boat which is the theoretical minimum volume that can be achieved. One lock full per boat will be achieved when there is always a boat waiting to go in the opposite direction to the one that has just used the lock. Hence minimum water is used if lock usage can be regulated to make this happen. Logically, providing we accept there is a level of inefficiency of water usage when allowing boaters to operate the locks randomly a water saving will be achieved when a sufficient proportion of boats are regulated to ensure that one follows another in use opposing direction. While this can be achieved with either one or both of the parallel locks in operation the advantage of using only one of the locks is that by slowing down the rate boats passing through at times of peak usage the overall length of time during the day that there will be a boat available to make an opposing move will be extended, thus making it more likely that water will be saved. A further advantage of having only one set of locks available is that once a queue has built up there isn't actually any need to supervise the operation with lock keepers since the taking in turns up and down will happen naturally. This means the system is still being regulated after they have gone home until such time as there are insufficient boats to keep taking it in turns. The impact of this is - or could be - controlled by restricting the overall hours the locks are open (I'm not sure if this is happening or not). So it really all comes down to how many boats use the locks outside of the times that there are boats queued waiting for passage and whether the result of those boats using only one set of locks is more inefficient than that of a whole days random usage of the parallel locks. What is certain in my mind is that it is possible to save water by regulating the use of the locks and that using only one of the locks is part of that equation. What no one knows is whether it actually does save water, that would require measurement to confirm the reality. My gut feeling is that the system in operation probably does save water albeit perhaps not that much. Similarly I suspect the water saved by having parallel locks and therefore less turning of locks also isn't that significant. Ultimately it's the same amount of work that needs to be done to get the same number of boats up and down the same rise/fall. What puzzles me most is that with a short flight with very long pounds above and below, a probable net inflow to the pound above, and the availability of back pumps that there is really much of an issue at all. So while I expect CRT have the ability to both model and measure the impact of different methods of operation at Hillmorton I think it's entirely possible the operations and engineering teams haven't discussed the issue and the restrictions are possibly an over zealous middle management decision to appear to be doing something. JP
  24. I don't agree with your view that closing one set of locks absolutely does not save water. Your comment implies that this somehow makes me less able to understand the issue than you. It isn't an insult but neither is it polite or a good debating tactic. On the subject of maintenance I doubt water leakage is a significant factor at Hillmorton. They are the only significant locks between the bottom of Napton and top of Atherstone and apparently have back pumps. An organisation like CRT will always have a significant workbank of repairs and probably have fairly rudimentary methods for prioritisation of workload. The value of their assets and the penalties for asset failure probably don't justify the major expenditure required to move to state of the art tools and techniques. We may not like the result of this - which is a regime of short term repairs rather than a preventive regime - but we as boaters may be even less inclined to pay to change it. Unfortunately conditions that vary from the norm expose the weaknesses in the regime. JP
  25. It can take a while to get through there at any time. Doesn't take many boats to cause a jam. Vulpes left home last Friday and may not be back until Xmas. It's currently in a safe haven as I am on my hols but in a strange foreign land rather than on the boat. JP
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