magpie patrick

Concur with above but would add it is not normal practice to stop in the middle of a flight of locks and BW discourage it, the main reason being that the very short pound are far more prone to draining and your moored boat, now leaning at a precarious angle, complicates refilling. If you work efficiently the 21 can be passed in 3 hours, so time your trip to get though in one go

Not sure whether tongue in cheek or not, but at wormleighton, the local landowner wasn't happy about locks to a short summit level, as it meant boatmen had reason to stop... So brindley went round

Oh... Down on the G&S they're called long boats... (as opposed to narrow boats) Best question (not necessarily daft) from a foreign tourist in Gloucester while I was on the boat... Is the River in Stratford the same one as the river in Bath? (took me a second to realise they are both "Avon"!)

Parked at Purton, walked and met mum and dad at Sharpness (boy, that walk was roasting!) and after an hour of chit chat made our way north. Mum and Dad on OUR boat BTW. Stopped at Gilgol for lunch, then another hours cruising to Frampton. Dad offered to walk for his car to take me back for ours, but I realised we were two miles from Saul and only 4 from Purton! So I took the folding bike and went to get our car. Anyone who follows, the towpath from Patch (Slimbridge) is NOT GOOD. As M&D nowhere near a shop today, picked up their shopping including papers and back to Frampton, then a pleasant hour before mum prepared tea, and then home. The only improvement would have been to not come home. Val spotted a Dutch barge for sale that she thinks the cats would be happy to live on...

As kids, we are with mum and dad at pontcysyllte, and a go-kart drifted past, a kind stranger fished it out and gave it to my Brother and I... Some years later, aged 18 with brother and two friends present as we took our first ever independent boat holiday, something else drifted across Pontcysyllte... A somewhat, but not entirely, deflated platic doll, about 5 feet 6 with life like finishes... We wondered how someone would explain getting THAT round the prop (so to speak)

Yup, and the Macc was a very late canal, some sixty years after the Bridgwater and the T and M. It's ruler straight in places One reason is act of negligence rather than deliberate fault. The significance of what highway engineers now call "forward visibility" and "stopping distance" was not fully understood. The Peak Forest Canal Company slightly altered their line at one point (north of Hyde Bank Tunnel) to improve this. Several canals (Chesterfield, Oxford, Coventry, T and M) made an awful lot of effort to stay very close to the contour. At Misterton on the Chesterfield the canal makes a sweeping detour to avoid a cutting that would only have been about 3 feet deep. In doing this, and respecting existing rights of way, you build bridges where they arise, not where you would ideally have them

Interesting, I've never mentioned it because I've never had to do it, obviously I've been lucky!

No, it;s an indicator, a proxy. You don't need to know the absolute temperature, you need to know whether its more than "normal" Do I need an hours meter in my car to tell how long the journey has been? No I just remember what time I set off and look at the time.

Erm, in principal yes, but I'd prefer canopus not to do ten years for GBH...

What are you trying to achieve? My temperature gauge basically runs cold to hot with no markings, do you need the actual temperature, or just an indication that it is "normal". If the engine runs happily, with all the symptoms of running warm when your gauge shows 66 degrees, then get alarmed if it creeps past 70 degrees

For the handling contest, the judge should be on the bank or on another boat, just like rowing contests etc... ideally the handling crew are on the boat alone, to make sure that no one accidentally turns the fuel tap off at a critical moment... However, I think we can agree that we'll be on each others boats together, just to be on the safe side! Ripple can crush a small fibreglass boat, and Cal can take off at a speed that would leap a flood barrier!

In my long standing tradition of considering whether the situation ois fair on the other person, rather than on me, I'm not sure Baldock is impartial...

Okay... We need to coordinate calenders Must confess actually, while assuming I've understood you description correctly, I don't believe you regarding narrow boats I've long felt we'd enjoy a look at Burton Waters and the Fossdyke and You would enjoy the G and S, and I quite fancy a go steering Cal... I'll have to check if the Bell serve Bud...

Phylis, I will give you an invite, come down to Saul, and use your techniques (not just that one, all of them) on a 62 foot narrow boat. I don't expect you to get her on the plane, as Ripple is a displacement boat. I'll try and arrange ot on a day witha cross wind, where 56 feet of cabin side is exposed. , bear in mind the front end of that is 56 feet from the prop... The wind doesn't care what boat you have but the boat does care of there is wind. There is a condition, I have a go at manoeuvring yours. A bit like those Rugby Union V Rugby League exhibition matches they used to play, Wigan V Bath, one game in each code. I don't belive that you have seen someone get a narrow boat in with wind blowing OFF the mooring with the technique you describe, and if the wind was blowing ON the mooring, they didn't need forward gear...

As I suspect it's in the Aral Sea probably not, but can't comment about the Kazakh Government policy

Phylis, we get on well together, but please don't tell me how to steer a narrow boat. It has never worked as a technique with any narrowboat that I have steered, and I've seen many people make monkeys of themselves trying. It worked on Gondola a treat, (it works on channel ferries as well) but not on a narrow boat

If you posted that in the unStable Bar heaven knows what would follow! For the record, I've never tried to get under the motorway there, just got to the junction at the start of the pools and turned round

Having steered everything from an 8 foot car top dinghy to the "Gondola" on Coniston Water I can't really agree with you Phylis. A 62 foot narrowboat has a much lower power to weight ratio and a much higher profile to the wind than an 8 foot car top dinghy with an outboard does. If you tried the technique you described with Ripple, that is tie up the back rope and the engage forward gear, she'd just strain at the rope and I'd end up using the centre rope anyway. I suspect the main reasons why compared to Cal are (1) fixed prop and rudder and (2) the T stud on our boat is in a very different location relative to prop, rudder and overall boat length than yours is meaning the prop is exerting no real leverage. What would work on Ripple is tying the front rope and then using the engine in forward gear to get the back in

while I would prefer them to work properly, please don't encourage BW to get rid of handspike gear they've already stripped the L&L of it's prize exhibits, Health and Safety mean that gear operated while standing on the gates is on the way out...