Ewan123

I had one grumpy old chap (waiting to take his boat up the lock), close one gate on me just as I was about to exit a lock - "I only need one gate open!" - my wife had just opened it. He closed the one on the side the boat was (wind was involved) so we delayed him further by reopening it and then heading out. He then closed one gate after we exited so that he could enter through his single gate. I noticed he was single-handed so offered an extra pair of hands - "No thanks, I've been doing this for 50 years without your help." 50 years of scraping away at gates! Brilliant. We chuckled.

I'll do that, thanks.

I think Foxton is as far north as they go though, we'll probably to be below Foxton by the time they get up here unfortunately. Edit: I texted them just to check and they used to do the whole Leicester ring but it wasn't economically viable, so now they just do Ashby - Foxton.

Is there any fuel boat north of Foxton? Or anywhere nearby that sells nets of logs?

If you've got the time and will, you might save yourself a big headache later on by just creating decent access to it all.

That's great to hear, we'll be there in about a month from now. So far very pleased with how well they communicate. Also pleased that they offered us a £500 discount if we were happy to move our dates! Which helps a bit when yes, they've had to put the prices up but that's only fair and they've communicated the change.

I think some people have misunderstood the aim of this... they're not asking which photo looks the nicest, they're asking which photos include features that one would consider to be "scenic", in the context that "scenic" = "positive wellbeing" and therefore "scenic" = "more likely to secure government funding" (it's not explicit in the accompanying text but I reckon that's the gist of it). It's likely that each photo is assigned a list of attributes, e.g. it contains one or more of: Water Trees Modern Buildings Historic Infrastructure Evidence of Disrepair Boats Bicycles etc. So if more photos containing e.g. Trees, Boats and Historic Infrastructure are voted as very scenic, compared to e.g. photos with Modern Buildings and Evidence of Disrepair, the data would show that the former features are generally considered more scenic, therefore have a more positive impact on wellbeing, which in turn helps justify a funding request that supports those items. Voting that infrastructure in a state of disrepair is not scenic, therefore, could help justify a funding request that says "we need this much money to maintain infrastructure". Of course, this depends on the list of attributes used and I'm only assuming it goes into that much detail, but I'm willing to bet that this is what's behind it. It's the sort of thing this kind of "Citizen Science" project can quite effective for (it would cost a LOT more money to have an employee score photos and would also be much less robust as it would be more subject to an individual's bias).

Well that's all quite reassuring, thanks folks.

Can anyone recommend places to aim for around Blisworth please? We're aiming to go north through the tunnel at the end of a day's cruise and ideally need at least seven days mooring (in October). I found lots of info about mooring around Stoke Bruerne but failed for Blisworth.

Apparently a narrowboat deployed their anchor a few days ago on the tidal Thames when their gears failed, and successfully awaited rescue by the RNLI without drifting along in the current. I don't have more details though... did anyone else hear about it?

I'd be tempted by that too... for narrowboats. I'm not trying to bash widebeams, but I must say that when a 65x12 widebeam goes past at a normal cruising speed, especially in a fairly narrow section, the resulting displacement of water can be a challenge even for well-deployed mooring lines if the ground conditions for pinning are less than ideal.

CO2 is gaseous pollution. It's a 'greenhouse gas', the increasingly high atmospheric levels of which are driving climate change. No nonsense there and nothing new about it, this has been known for decades.

We use the Homefire Heatlogs mainly, used to use 'Hardwood Briquettes' when that's what the nearest fuel boat supplied. I like the heatlogs - should be more eco friendly than any coal variation, more energy dense than wood and take up less storage space (than wood). They do burn faster and take a bit more watching than coal, but we don't keep the fire in overnight anyway (due to noisy radiator circulation pump by our heads). We got them from Wickes last year, easy delivery to anywhere we were located, though the price has gone from 3 packs for £15 last winter to 3 for £25! Need to shop around a bit I think...

Well I'm glad my instinct for bs is shared I try to play a little bit of devil's advocate at least.

I didn't hang around there long enough to hear a nice boat going through... I'd love to hear Clover's Bollinder in there though.

Has anyone come across this or similar and have some informed thoughts on how feasible/useful it might be on a boat's diesel engine? It seems to be a unit that uses power from the engine to produce hydrogen and oxygen (by electrolysis) which it then adds through the air intake, apparently then improving combustion rates for reduced emissions... ATMOS-CLEAR BROCHURE 19 JUN 2020 square (fliphtml5.com) / https://www.atmos-clear.com/ I'm not sure my budget would ever stretch to it (I heard it's circa £400 to get one installed or £200 for the unit as DIY fit, plus whatever the 'topping up' of its contents would later cost). I do find it interesting though, we've not generally got very clean engines on the waterways and I wouldn't mind breathing in fewer nasties when stood near my/someone else's exhaust...

I'm not an expert but I would have thought that the solar panels shouldn't be able to affect an engine alarm if wired properly (interested to hear more expert opinions).

If the engine is fairly new to this boat, and the RCR chap suggested a bad installation, it sounds plausible the mounting could have been incorrect from the first instance and might not even have dropped/changed at all. @Mgt Do you have any pics of all of the engine mounts?

It is interesting to see the data behind some of these scales. My company does the usual employee satisfaction nonsense survey and apparently the scale they use is US based; any response of 7 or below is counted as a negative. They wondered why the UK employee scores were so low and when they asked the UK teams, everyone said they considered 7 to be quite a high score. It seems there's actually a cultural variation in the attitude to reporting satisfaction.

There's nothing to say that they're going to take all responses and come up with one conclusion for all. The fact that there's a question asking whether the responder is a leisure or liveaboard boater suggests that that's not the case as it makes it very easy for them to split the responses by those categories.

Fair point 😅 I wonder whether there are any/many where something else is the limit on air draught?

If you catch it at the wrong time, Roydon Rail Bridge is very limiting for air draught on the Stort... it has definitely caught a few out.

Our Morco F11 EL has just started playing funny games. Apparently these models are starting to get to that general age where bits go wrong.

My main problem was that the pin would just bounce/slip to one side when it was on a solid stone surface Fair point, these are just spares though (until I lose the others). I've not had any need to cross pins yet, tight spring lines have done the job so far. I'll keep that in mind though.