phantom_iv

This doesn't look like a horrible bodge at all... leaks like a sieve too. Particularly like the OSB board.

“Quoin post” - thanks! I knew there was a proper way to describe the broken bit, but couldn’t recall what it was.

They've had three and a half, but not sure how many of those they've been using coronavirus as an excuse to slack off unable to work due to social distancing

What's the lock looking like - does it look like they're nearly finished if you're nearby? Picture I saw from a couple of days ago (Attached) clearly shows the problem with the RH gate - if they've done some sort of bodge that involves glueing it back together maybe they need to wait for the glue to set? ETA: one would hope that since they've known about in since March they'd have had time to get a new gate made. But somehow I suspect not...

There was also a broken swingbridge not far down the canal that seems to have been fixed today - maybe they went to help fix that for a bit? Not much point having a nicely fixed up lock if the canal is still closed a couple of miles down the line!

I was wondering wether we'll see a difference between air-conditioned pubs and non-air-conditioned pubs... assuming there's ever enough transmission there to produce useful data. Or that you can ever prove where transmission occurred.

It's so they know which way up to put the boat when it goes back in the water.

Building sites are considerably more dangerous environments than pubs. In neither environment did the staff spend more than a few seconds closer than ~2m away from us. PPE would be quite ridiculous to be honest given the other precautions being taken - especially in an outdoor environment. I'd say that both pubs I visited had much lower risk of virus transmission than any supermarket or other shop I've been to recently, regardless of PPE (or lack thereof).

Haven't been to any canalside pubs yet, but went to a couple of land-bound pubs on Saturday, and everything seemed really well organised in both - had the procedures explained to me on entry in both, both had one-way systems, table service only, distancing between tables, sanitiser available on entry. Very well organised for day 1. In the first pub I sat outside, they came and took the orders and left a tray of drinks on the edge of the table for us to pick up, and picked up the empties from the same spot. In the interests of science I repeated the process a couple of times and was pleased by the repeatability of the results. details taken on pen and paper, to be kept for three weeks then destroyed. In the second one I sat inside, only some of the tables were available for use, and they'd rearranged the furniture and repurposed their function room as an extra dining area. We were offered a choice of table service or ordering via an app (obtainable via a QR code on the menu), depending on how worried you were about keeping your distance from the staff. Details taken online via a QR code on entry to the pub and printed on the other side of the menu. None of the staff wore PPE, I suspect they've left it as a personal choice for them wether to do so or not. Overall a very positive and safe experience from both (although, frankly I'd go anyway). I heartily recommend going to pubs on this experience ;-)

My head hurts now. Seems like the throttle would be the easiest to ‘dual’ though, as it’s just a one-way pull against a spring? Personally I’ve just learnt to operate the morse lever with my knee ? That said, a bolt-on hand throttle on the tiller and just using the morse control to engage the gears would at least make some situations easier. Or have a floor mounted, foot operated gear lever to go with it ?

Have to admit I was wondering exactly how such things would work as I wrote that, but thought that as such things exist it must be a problem that’s been solved by now.

Just buy a generic lawnmower throttle control lever and bolt it to your tiller. Or else one designed to bolt to a gearstick for disabled drivers if you need a heavier duty one. Might even get away with having a second one to operate the gearbox? Run them in parallel with your existing controls like a dual control setup. Then if your new throttle cable goes ping you still have some control...

Can't work out if the 17.7 miles he's travelled in a year is the total distance his boat as moved, or the distance between the two furthest locations he's been to in each direction. Either way, that's a day's cruise! ?

I disagree, the barge was much nicer than the George (at least last summer). Better location, better food, better service, better beer, better garden. But as for Claverton the pumping station's well worth a visit if you can see it on a running day.

This sounds like nonsense to me. I would (perhaps somewhat naively) expect the most efficient (and therefore least polluting) speed for a vehicle to be at the point at which it is just in top gear with minimal engine loading, so probably more like the 55mph range ish bracket for a lot of vehicles. I guess however it depends on wether you're measuring pollution emitted per minute or pollution emitted per mile... clearly the latter is far more useful unless people leave their house and decide they'll drive for 30 mins then stop, rather than going to a destination a set distance away...

"Zero emission capability" would imply to me that some sort of diesel/electric hybrid would be acceptable as long as it is capable of running on batteries only in urban areas... where presumably plentiful charging points could be installed canalside. Then out of urban areas (where realistically charging points will be like hen's teeth) you can fire up your diesel and continue as before, with the difference being that you've now got a much better battery pack on board than before. As long as the regulations are sensible and have exemptions for historic vessels etc then I can only think that the development of mainstream marine hybrid technology and battery packs and subsequent price reductions can only be a good thing. Is it just me who quite fancies the idea of a vintage diesel engine driving a generator powering a modern lithium battery/electric motor combo?

Petrol outboard plus point: easy to clear stuff off the prop. minus point: sucking plastic bags through the cooling intakes is a less pleasurable experience.

Certainly is an awesome sound - having checked wikipedia it turns out the railway locomotives bolted 6 'triangles' together to form an 18 cylinder, 36 piston engine. Then installed two of them to give 3300 horsepower. Now if only someone made a miniature version that would fit in a boat...

They were called deltics because they had six pistons in three cylinders arranged in a triangle (like greek letter Delta). The two pistons in each cylinder opposed each other and (almost!) met in the middle. Very cool!

But what about all the jobs create developing / manufacturing / installing / maintaining these self-checkouts? I make sure to use them so I keep all these people in jobs. And generally much better jobs than waving something in front of a machine that goes 'beep'.

The hire boat case is an interesting one. I don’t really see how they could go after the hire boat company. The hire boat company has definitely not entered into a contract with the mooring provider, however they spin it. They could ask for the details of the hire boat customer, but I can’t really see as providing this would be in the interests of the hire boat operator, so they can just say no or even cite data protection laws. It’s not at all like speeding offences in a hire car as that’s an offence (against the law), mooring outside Tesco’s in Reading definitely isn’t!

But as there have been no laws broken here prosecution is impossible. This is purely a civil dispute, for breach of 'contract'. This is pretty much the same deal as parking 'fines' on private property (unlike actual parking fines on public highways / council owned car parks which are actually fines as parking restrictions there are enshrined in law - albeit local bylaws in many cases).

Which has no legal basis, other than to encourage you to pay the money you've promised them in the 'contract'. It's basically an invoice, rather than a fine. Which you don't have to pay, unless you so choose. The only legal recourse they have is to take you to court for breach of contract. For which they first have to prove that you've knowingly entered into a contract. This might prove tricky in front of a judge with even below average common sense, especially if you have a good selection of photos, maps, etc... what they like to call 'evidence'.

Not a lawyer but as far as I'm aware they have no legal basis to 'fine' you, they can only claim that you've entered into a contract to pay them a stack of cash by mooring there as per the terms set out in the sign. However if they haven't made the sign obvious then they're in a rather dubious position to claim you've entered into a contract of which you can't reasonably be expected to be aware. Therefore I'd invite them to see you in court if they really intend to press their claim.

Luckily this wasn't a narrowboat, but a smaller and lighter vessel - the second time round it still dragged, but still bought me the extra couple of minutes I needed to get help before ending up on the rocks.