booke23

You drive a hard bargain!

Funny enough I had a very similar experience going up Caen hill a few years ago. Approaching the lower Foxhanger lock I noticed a hire boat being held on the centre line about a 1/4 mile before the lock so I stopped next to them and we agreed to share the locks going up. As we approached the lock, a moored boat decided they were going to get into the lock before the hire boat and literally went to action stations to untie.....ropes and gangplanks flying everywhere, and their crew running about and jumping to and from the boat. The hire boat crew were very unimpressed and were going to have it out with them at the lock landing, but I advised against it as we would be stuck in close proximity behind the miserable cretins for at least the next 6 hours. But I had a great chat with the hire boat crew and got to know them quite well by the time we got to the top! Turns out they were going to spend the night at the top and turn around and go straight back down the next morning for the experience.

I’ve never understood this superior and nasty attitude from some private owners. Goes to show there are always stupid pratts in all walks of life.

That's just speculation, unless there is actual evidence to show otherwise. 😉 As someone who has been involved in horses my whole life, I can tell you they can most definitely trot and canter (and even gallop). A bigger issue on canals is getting them under bridges etc.

I was wondering if they used a particular type of heavy horse on these high speed packet boats (Shire, Clydesdale etc), but after some digging I can find no information on this. However I did find that the lead horse was 'ridden by a boy' (no doubt to keep weight down!) who would blow a horn to alert other boats the packet boat was approaching.

Given enough energy (shoreline or stove) it'll certainly be possible to heat the boat up in winter. But condensation on cold surfaces could be a real problem, and on a boat with little or no insulation this means the walls and ceiling which would be pretty unpleasant. You won't know until you try it.

I bet the 'Swiftsure' boat at 5'6" beam could really fly! 23cwt unladen....I wonder how they managed that with an iron hull. Amazing find, thanks for sharing it.

Thanks for that, fascinating bit of film. The virtually complete lack of moored boats is quite a contrast to today.

I read that that boat was 72ft but do we know what beam it was @magpie patrick? I did a google search but came up with no information on beam and it does look quite slender so perhaps less that 7ft bream.

Without any doubt (I walked that section a few years ago).....as you say back in the day by the time the passengers got their stove pipe hats on, and fiddled with their snuff boxes, probably longer. I was getting at that with my 'Vic Horse' calculator suggestion!

OSB has absolutely no place on a boat. Overpriced for what looks like a fairly low rent amateur fitout even if it was done by a boat yard. To illustrate that point here's a boat that recently sold in the same area for similar money - https://www.devizesmarinaboatsales.com/bumper. It's in a different league.

What we really need is for Vic prop to produce a Vic horse calculator!

I've certainly read about the Lancaster canal flyboats/passenger boats that used to attain those speeds. Yes....right under your nose it seems!

Looks like it might have low level 'skirting board' style rads, but I'm not sure.

Very true, not to mention the steel bulkhead. A major PITA if that's rusted trough.

Absolutely, didn't realise this had the free wheeling hub option....these weren't fitted as standard at the time so very definite advantage for this Land Rover.

As most of us already do, judging by the 'what coal is best' threads on here.

The defenders were the last word in luxury and mod cons compared to a Series Land Rover 😅 I have a slight nostalgic notion to one day buy an old Series Land Rover, if I were to ever have one I would get a V8.....if you are going to burn that much fuel you might as well do it with a nice exhaust note and reasonable power!

I've got no iron in this fire but I found this strange too......I counted...a 3746 word essay, nearly half a dissertation!!

That's not great. Ours used to do about 18-20mpg although that did drop to 12mpg when towing!

On paper the 4LK is worse than the 2.25L diesel.....57hp vs 62hp But the 4LK with it's bigger displacement and considerably higher torque would hopefully feel much better to drive as it produces it's maximum horsepower at 2100rpm, whereas the 2.25 rover produced it's horsepower at 4000rpm. Many years ago we had a SWB series 3 2.25l petrol and that was pretty agricultural. I had a lift in a series diesel once and remember it as very very noisy in the cabin. This Land rover looks like an interesting conversion. I watched the YT video and it has had to be extensively modified to get the 4LK in, including the addition of modified driveshafts and moving the gearbox rearward. I see they had to fit a later defender gearbox and transfer case which I think is permanent 4WD. Although it has a centre diff, it probably isn't ideal as series front hubs weren't designed to be driven at all times so could wear prematurely.

Thank's for asking. I thought he was swearing....after all stove issues can get quite trying!

I hope not, the boat seems reasonable. Also the OP hasn't visited for nearly 36hrs so has hasn't seen the whole hot water debate!

And if the OP were to let us know their boat dimensions we could roughly calculate how many bystanders they would need to load to get the boat down in the water sufficiently to get under the bridge!

It's not!! Your boat is 2.35m which is a shade over 7 feet 8.5 inches......google always converts to decimals but 7.7ft is not 7ft 7 inches! In other words your boat is half an inch too tall and will hit the bridge.