booke23

Lots are getting away with CCing from Bath to Foxhangers and back. The key is not drawing attention to yourself by overstaying etc. Of course if you take a winter mooring at Foxhangers every year that makes it much easier.

AFAIK the word on the ground is that you can just about get away with CCing from Bath to Devizes.

We shall have to agree to disagree.

Well quite. Or better still ban the ridiculous ‘craft’ from CRT waters all together.

I was just looking that up as it happens, and found that guidance. I’ve inserted it below….they even provide a picture to illustrate the technique. Idiots like the youtube guy will simply end up in CRT banning paddle boards from the aquaduct all together thereby spoiling it for sensible paddle boarders.

Perhaps he didn’t wear an ankle strap on purpose, so that if he did fall over the edge at least his board wouldn’t get dragged to oblivion too…..every cloud! Seriously though, it’s utter stupidity. I thought CRT has guidance in place that paddle boards shouldn’t go across the aquaduct, or if they do you should not be stood up.

Very interesting @Alan de Enfield, thank you for posting. The other day I took my infrared thermometer to the boat out of interest. It had been well below freezing overnight for over a week, -5c overnight and the canal was frozen over. The air temperature was -1c and I measured the temperature of the baseplate and the sides of the swim in the engine bay.....all were around +3c due to the water under the ice being this temperature. In fact everything on or below the level of the Uxter plate was +3. That includes the engine and fuel filter so as long as these items are at or below the level of the Uxter plate, the temperature would have to get quite a bit colder than it's been recently to wax diesel on a boat.

Remember the charger will operate at close to 14v so factoring in 60% efficiency you'll need close to 700W continuous to run it. Still well within the capacity of a 1kw generator. I have to agree. There are a few people using EU20i at my mooring and I've been very unimpressed with how noisy they are....noticeable in the boat even from 50 yards away. You can hardly hear the EX650 at 10 yards. Only snag is some modern electrics and chargers might not like the non pure sinewave output.

ABC at Aldermaston wharf have their own crane that can lift wide beams. Not that close to BOA though. Foxhangers have their own slipway and tractor, but I'm not sure if they can slip widebeams. You could probably arrange your own crane to get the boat in the water there though. Failing all of the above Devizes wharf seems to be a popular place for craning widebeams in.....again you'd have to arrange the crane yourself and descend the Caen hill flight to get to BOA.

Wasn't there two breaches? The first one was repaired quite quickly but the repair technique (steel piling) caused water to seep into the hillside and caused a much worse breach about 6 months after the repair......After this breach the very extensive concrete channel that we see today was constructed complete with ground water drainage underneath. I think the feeder was closed for a couple of years while this was done but others may be able to confirm.

It's funny how fashions always come around again, even those with tragic consequences. Like the saying goes "those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it" I was watching Saving lives at sea a few weeks ago and the RNLI were called out to Ramsey Island off St Davids by a commercial boat who happened to notice a large group of SUP's who had paddled out to Ramsey island. There were 16 people on SUP's and some even had young children on the boards with them.....the mind boggles. They were all totally oblivious to the danger that when the tide turned they would all be washed out to open sea. Needless to say they were all picked up and taken ashore by the lifeboat.

Arrested and charged. From what I can find out the CPS are yet to decide whether it's in the public interest to prosecute.

Personally speaking, I think stand up paddle boarding is ridiculous. It has only got popular because it looks cool leaned up against a VW van on Instagram. A totally unsuitable craft to deal with even the slightest abnormal situation on the water....you might as well be on a Lilo. But I, like most members of this forum speak with the benefit of many years experience on the water and know how it can bite. You can't expect people with no water experience to know this, and when they book a tour with a 'professional' outfit you don't expect them to lead you into a very dangerous situation and get you killed. The assistant tour guide was killed when trying to rescue the people stuck, and the main tour leader and owner of the business was arrested a week later and charged with gross negligence manslaughter. It wasn't mentioned in the report as the MAIB only stick to the circumstances of the accident and don't directly apportion blame.....although they came as close as I've seen to doing so on this occasion.

I've just finished reading this report. To summarise, this was a 'guided' paddleboard tour carried out by what appeared to the inexperienced participants as a professional paddle board tour outfit, but was in fact not. The tour leaders took the group over the weir where upon they all fell into the water and some became trapped against the weir wall due to hydraulic forces whereupon four drowned, including one of the tour leaders who was attempting to effect a rescue. The local Kayak club regularly used the area and their guidance on the weir was 'At high water levels the town weir becomes extremely dangerous with high potential for loss of life. The right hand side can be exceptionally dangerous' And that it should be portaged....there are steps just before the weir to easily do this. The tour leaders were not aware of this guidance from the Haverfordwest Kayak club. In any case I'm not sure a SUP is a suitable craft to take over a weir in any circumstances. It's always terrible reading these sorts of report, but I find this one particularly tragic and frustrating.

MAIB report into the October 2021 Haverfordwest paddleboard deaths here I know not exactly canal related, but there's plenty of them about on the canals.

10 months.

I wonder how they got that aboard a standard springer. There is a piano boat in London that has a grand piano on board, but it’s a custom built wide beam with a massive pigeon box that can be opened to crane the piano on and off.

Well maybe, but it's an apple and oranges situation. Sea boating requires much greater knowledge, skill and training compared to inland waterway boating and I'd never recommend an inland water boater go near the sea without considerable mentoring/training even if they have a suitable boat.

Oh don't apologise! Some Brokers do provide a list of Surveyors however it's best to do research (on here) and get recommendations. The best surveyors are usually busy and you might have to wait a while for a slot. Seems perfectly good and pertinent advice to me. Especially given the variations between brokers in this regard....at one end of the scale some won't refund a deposit at all and at the other end some allow you to pull out for any reason with the deposit returned in full no questions asked (this is not common).

We might have been to save them the bother with more information!!

We don't know, the OP hasn't got round to answering the questions put to them.