Paddle
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Posts posted by Paddle
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La timonerie = Wheelhouse. New word for the day.
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13 hours ago, ditchcrawler said:
There is a time laps film on my blog of the Backs taken by Biggles https://nbharnser.blogspot.com/2012/10/
You didn't fancy going up the rollers then, to head to Grantchester?!
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The magic of colourisation. What really interested me was the roll-on-roll-off ferry at 1:16. Wikipedia claims the first Ro-Ro ships for motor vehicles were WW2 landing craft.
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On 28/09/2020 at 16:21, Pluto said:
The first colour photos were prior to this, being taken by John Mercer from Clayton-le-Moors. In the 1850s, he produced several prints in a variety of colours. Mercer was a self-taught chemist, who taught himself to read and write as a teenager whilst working as a handloom weaver. He is best known for Mercerisation, a way of preparing cloth for printing, but he did much other ground-breaking work on chemicals for printing textiles. https://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/john-mercer-the-local-unsung
Up to a point, Mercer's are not really colour photographs are they. Red and white photographs, rather than black and white. The colour of the photograph has nothing to do with the colour of the subject.
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You may be surprised to learn that the first colour photographs were taken in the 1861. It was a bit of a struggle, and proper film only came in in 1935 https://wiki2.org/en/Color_photography but it was still based on the same principle of separation of the Red Green and Blue colours. You did need three cameras and three projectors...
@magnetman I liked the person walking along the top of the lock gate at that point.
And I liked the eyes painted on the barge at 1:27.
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The skill is not completely dead:
https://www.canalboat.co.uk/canal-boats/riveted-narrowboat-company-1-2257911
http://www.brinklowboatservices.com/restoration-work/
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To be fair - though perhaps indicating the level of neglect over the ages - the listing does say that Ely has had a new bottom and sides. (Which makes one wonder whether there is anything left of the original.)
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How long have you owned the boat for? 1 year
Why are you selling her? Moving ashore
The above is in the ad and is an interview with the owners of STARCROSS. Presumably what they really mean is moving somewhere where their feet don't get wet. (I hate to be rude about beautiful old wooden boats, but one has to be realistic.)
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On 25/08/2020 at 14:47, blackrose said:
Don't go onto the Thames then.
Thames locks are a bit different, you need a rope there. I had in mind a quick-emptying narrow lock with a heavy, 72' long, ex-working boat in it where a rope is pretty much useless.
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Conway back on eBay as "circumstances have changed". Presumably the woodworm have been reluctant to move out.
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1 hour ago, Captain Pegg said:
For the first 150 years of canals no boat had an engine. And all boats have lines. As a single hander you’ll have the engine running but it’s not a whole lot of use if you can’t reach the controls.
Yes.
The Building of the Empire States Building cost 5 lives (or possibly 14 according to the New York Daily News). Last year the entire UK construction industry recorded 30 deaths. Going back to the nineteenth century 3 navvies died per mile of railway laid (https://wiki2.org/en/Navvy) - I have not found an equivalent number for canals. I like to think of this as progress! Boats with running engines are safer in locks than those without.
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Turning the engine off in a lock strikes me as downright dangerous.
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It's astonished me for many years that Peel still keep the Runcorn Arm open at all. I guess there are mooring fees and it would be expensive to shut it, but what's it actually for? (In their accountants' minds?)
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On 07/08/2020 at 14:27, Tam & Di said:
A typical mediaeval village of around 180 people required 3 square miles of land to feed that size of population and is why, if you look at an old map, you can see that medieval settlements are all about 2 - 3 miles apart.
Suggesting between four and nine square miles of land per village assuming a square grid - or between two and four if a triangular grid.
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What I really enjoyed was watching the film of your butty HAMPTON reversing at Braunston and thinking "What on earth is going on there, narrow boats don't dance like that!" It took a bit of digging to work out what was going on. What a machine!
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Take a pretty cottage. Pebbledash it in brown and put in plastic windows. And you have an ugly cottage.
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Don't be afraid of lime mortar. Keep the CO sweet, and buy a ready-mixed tub of it or three. It might be a smidgen more expensive than cement-based, but in the grand scheme of things its the repointing work that's the expensive part. And it will look more beautiful and help to preserve the bricks for the future better than cement-based would.
I am not a CO.
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https://goo.gl/maps/enNjpswstpZzBpc89 Burgess Park is where the isolated footbridge is, I often pass through.
I hadn't realised there was a Peckham Arm, though. That explains why it seems to do a right angle - it does!
https://knowyourlondon.wordpress.com/2019/08/21/grand-surrey-canal-route/
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On 19/05/2020 at 14:54, pete harrison said:
21st century intrusion is fine by me if it allows a wooden cabin not to leak, and I lived in a leaky wooden back cabin for several years (Company owned boat). Again these adhesives and sealants allow the overall fabric and design philosophy of these boats to be maintained whilst also providing the opportunity for the cabin e.t.c. to be robust.
I know I know. Yet... show me a single 1930s boatman who wouldn't have replaced his Bolinder with a 21st century Yamaha. Never sulks; never gets cold going down a flight; starts straight away; doesn't stall when you're trying to put it into reverse etc. The overall design philosophy of the boat is maintained (after all engines were swapped the entire time, that shiny Bolinder itself replacing a Kromhout) whilst also providing the opportunity to be robust... And much less a fundamental change than using foreign timber for the entire 71' length of the boat?
Not trying to argue. Just going round in circles!
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On 13/05/2020 at 22:17, MoominPapa said:
It doesn't matter what you think the result of catching the virus will be for you personally, the one thing you can know for sure is that if you catch it your body will make billions of new virus particles and distribute them into the world, where they may well cause great harm to others. The best way to protect the vulnerable is NOT TO CATCH THE DAMN DISEASE even if you hardly notice it yourself.
MP.
I think you've got that completely upside down. The best way to protect the vulnerable is for them to hide away and for the rest of us to get it as quickly as possible. Then the vulnerable can come out of hiding.
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18 hours ago, pete harrison said:
It is a tragedy that almost every composite 'historic' boat has been re-bottomed in steel, and that today's 'enthusiasts' reject a wooden bottom based upon the hearsay of those who know no better or the memories of soggy life expired 1950's elm bottoms of the past. Foreign woods have transformed this situation, and improved construction practice combined with modern adhesives and sealants mean that wooden bottoms, cabins, gunwales, cants, decks e.t.c. can and should be preserved - the alternative is that 'historic' boats will become modern welded steel pleasure boats that only give the outward appearance of being something that they are not
So if they're constructed using completely different materials - different timber, modern adhesives and sealants - in what sense are they still historic? And if you're going to accept this level of 21st century intrusion, then why not a steel bottom which would have been a perfectly possible alternative way of building the boat in the first place, firmly early twentieth century technology.
Just wondering.
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Just now, Wanderer Vagabond said:
But you never catch the same strain of cold twice, so immunity it possible provided that this virus doesn't keep mutating, like a cold virus does.
We already know this has mutated. There are different strains on the West and East coasts of America, etc. The question is, how far has it mutated.
Don't forget that the tribes of the Amazon die like flies if they get 'flu. We all have an element of immunity such that we are generally mostly fine, this immunity having been inherited. On this level Covid is much less vicious than 'flu. Nobody has any sort of immunity yet 99.9?% survive,
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Frangar if you're under 40 it's pointless, under 50 there's no need, under 60 there should be no need and under 70 you're likely to be OK. It's a big error of judgement that we're going to be paying for over many decades.
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Thanks Matty40s. The, um, interesting approach to a lock was very clearly described by Pete, but thank you for the cross-winding description. I'm sure we've all managed to approach a lock, um, interestingly in our time, but you'd need nerves of steel to do it repeatedly and deliberately. And, it has to be said, the conscience of a mass murderer.
Covid rules anyone?
in General Boating
Posted
I have driven thousands of miles during (various) lockdowns and never seen a single police car stopping people, let alone been stopped myself. Haven't been to Wales, mind. I'd just go to the boat if I were you, and your cover story is that you're letting it out this year so you're travelling for business.