Captain Pegg

That could make the perfect genuine historic butty to tow behind my modern pleasure boat. JP

Although I agree with those extolling the virtues of the Staffs & Worcs I think with the circumstances of the OP the obvious choice is to explore between Napton and Atherstone including the Ashby and possibly Coventry basin for variety. I think there is enough for a weeks hire and plenty of bases to choose from. I would certainly advocate including some locks. The Ashby is lovely to some but to others it's boring. I wouldn't recommend it to a family with kids. JP

None required on W&B either. Although if boating in Worcestershire one place where they are fitted is the locks through Kidderminster.

The original question was in relation to lifting, the buoyancy stuff was just the method of calculation. Obviously the OP was using the term weight in its everyday form and not by it's strict scientific definition. Do you think telling him his boat weighs 80kN (on the surface of the earth) would be helpful? JP

It's an open Internet forum so no one should feel obliged to declare anything and there should certainly be no assumption they are trying to hide anything by not doing so. However the interaction needed to make such a forum work will result in people naturally making assumptions about the people they are addressing, that's just basic human nature. So there's really no point in getting arsey if you declare something that purports to be fact but isn't and someone takes you at face value. Personally I tend to take things I read literally and I am not very good at reading between the lines. Anyway, the dangers of trying to turn facts into fiction are amply demonstrated by Mr Trump. Same applies if you choose not to declare. Folks will naturally fill in the gaps. You just have to accept that as a consequence. JP

Always a 'he', or is that an assumption on the part of a male dominated forum? Did fallenangel of Victron inverter thread fame declare gender? I didn't see it but I did note there was an assumption that they were male. From the style of their posts I would put my fiver on that poster having been female if I had to make a guess. JP

Surely you can work that one out!!?? It's a test of logical thinking not mathematics. JP

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

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

I'm not buying it Dr Bob. If you were that much of a fan you would be at the game. JP

Half a mark only for each of those descriptions Mike.

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

I wouldn't want to swim in canal water.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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