moggyjo
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Posts posted by moggyjo
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I don't think you could compile a list for the south Oxford canal area, as I don't think there are any anymore, except for Summertown, (if its still there) The others have all closed down
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Does anyone know what the cheapest diesel is around the Oxford Area ish, that we could get some from, Tomorrow or Monday (By car, so Grand Union OK as far as distance goes.
Thankyou,
Wendy
By the way I have some old diesel, (roughly 5 years old) do you know if it would still be alright to use?
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There might be a bit of a misunderstanding here. Yes, certainly the same story will often be printed in several magazines.
What we don't do, in common with almost every other magazine I know, is print the same words in the knowledge that those words would appear identically in another magazine. A fair number of people buy two or three waterway magazines every month and they'd feel pretty cheated if they got the same thing in both!
Richard
editor, WW
Have just got a email from Catherine, saying that WW are getting a David Blagrove to do the Obit for Jack. I don't know how he will gather any info but what I do know is that Rose will not talk to anyone that she does not know about their life in the past, as she has done so in the past, only to find that everything she had said, had been changed. I introduced Catherine and Mark to Jack & Rose some years ago and they get on very well, and the main thing is, whenever they print anything on them, they show it to Rose to make sure that everything is true and that they have not added anything.
Aparantly a guy went round to Roses house the other day, started asking about their life on the boats and she told them to go away
Wendy
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I meant her working history mystery. Her current owner has no idea about her, prior to the Tooley conversion.
If I have time tomorrow, I will go and ask Rose what she knows, I seem to remember her saying she didn't like the boat, something about it being difficult getting on and off.
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Could it be forget me not as shes based near their isnt she?
In their early married life, Jack and Rose lived and worked on Kent and the butty boat Forget-Me-Not, delivering coal from collieries in Warwickshire to the canal wharf at Juxon Street in Jericho, Oxford,
Also a friend of mine Lizzie used to own Aster in the mid 80' I think the last place she had Aster was at Sandbach. Her previous boat Whispering Grass, got itself in the Waterways magazines, when she sold it to a guy who got it low loaded onto the Norfolk Broads. Later date wanted to get it back onto the system but due to cost of low loading he decided to take it along the coast line. She got trashed.
The article said that there were piano keys strewn all over the beach. (Lizzie had a piano put in when she had the boat stretched in the early 80')Wendy
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Meet Robin Evans 2008
British Waterways Chief Executive Robin Evans will be on the road this summer meeting customers around the waterways network
There are two separate sessions arranged in each of BW's operating areas. All customers are very welcome to attend and ask questions on matters that are important to them
One topic that will be covered is BW's trial tender method of pricing and allocating moorings. Information about this will be available at the meeting including copies of the public consultation paper
Please contact the local organiser, shown below, for more information and to let them know which meeting you would like to attend
Unit
Date
Venues
Time
Local Organiser
North West
Thurs 5 June
Dukinfield Town Hall , King Street , Dukinfield, Tameside , SK16 4LA
09.30 to 11.00
Denise Bradshaw
01942 405793
North West
Thurs 5 June
The Orwell, 4 Wigan Pier, Wallgate, Wigan, Lancashire , WN3 4EU
18.00 to 19.30
Denise Bradshaw
01942 405793
South West
Fri 13 June
National Waterways Museum , Gloucester Docks, Llanthony Warehouse, The Docks, Gloucester GL1 2EH
08.30 to 10.00
Karen Morphet
01452 318008
South West
Fri 13 June
The Bear Hotel, Market Place, Devizes, Wiltshire SN10 1HS
17.30 to 19.00
Karen Morphet
01452 318008
East Midlands
Wed 9 July
Nottingham Sailing Club, Adbolton Lane, West Bridgford, Nottingham NG2 5AS
08.30 to 10.00
Tracey Parkin
01636 675731
East Midlands
Wed 9 July
The Elms Hotel, London Road , Retford, Nottinghamshire DN22 7DX
17.30 to 19.00
Tracey Parkin
01636 675731
London
Fri 18 July
Lea Valley Village Youth Hostel, Cheshunt , Herts EN8
08.30 to 10.00
Harriet Henniker-Major
0207 985 7205
London
Fri 18 July
London Canal Museum , 12-13 New Wharf Road , London N1 9RT
17.30 to 19.00
Harriet Henniker-Major
0207 985 7205
West Midlands
Tues 22 July
Hatton Meeting Rooms, Canal Lane , Hatton, Warwick , CV35 7JL
08.30 to 10.00
Carol Collinge
01827 252031
West Midlands
Tues 22 July
Chasewater Innovation Centre, Chasewater Country Park , Pool Road , Brownhills, Staffordshire WS8 7NL
17.30 to 19.00
Carol Collinge
01827 252031
Wales & Border Counties
Thurs 24 July
Rudyard Lake Visitor Centre, Leek, Staffordshire ST13 8XB
10.30 to 12.00
Veronica Gordon
01606 723802
Wales & Border Counties
Thurs 24 July
Doddington Lodge, Doddington Road , Whitchurch SY13 1EN
17.30 to 19.00
Veronica Gordon
01606 723802
Yorkshire
Tues 29 July
The Pastures Lodge & Hotel, Pastures Road , Mexborough , S64 0JJ
09.00 to 10.30
Linzi O'Neill
0113 281 6861
Yorkshire
Tues 29 July
East Riddlesden Hall, Bradford Road , Keighley, West Yorkshire , BD20 5EL
17.30 to 19.00
Linzi O'Neill
0113 281 6861
South East
Thurs 31 July
The Boat Inn, Stoke Bruerne, Nr Towcester, Northamptonshire , NN12 7SB
8.30 to 10.00
Chris Stanley
01908 302552
South East
Thurs 31 July
The Mill House Banbury, North Newington Road, North Newington , Banbury, Oxfordshire , OX15 6AA
17.30 to 19.00
Chris Stanley
01908 302552
Scotland
Wed 6 August
The Maple Court Hotel , 12 Ness Walk, Inverness , IV3 5SQ
17.30 to 19.00
Frances Mimnagh
0141 354 7534
Scotland
Thurs 7 August
Best Western Park Hotel, Camelon Road , Falkirk, Stirlingshire , FK1 5RY
08.30 to 10.00
Frances Mimnagh
0141 354 7534
Jonathan Bryant . 14 May 2008
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I agree seems like BW can't win, do these poor people who don't like a bit of grass on there boat want BW to publish a closure programme of summer stopages so that they can cut the grass!!
Nothing to do with BW, Its Thrupp CC and surely with all the money they have they could afford a mower with a grass box on it.
We have also found the grass and hedge cutting contractors on the Oxford Canal to be extremely conscientious - for example, when they cut the hedges, they always take care to remove any stray hedge cuttings from our boat.Your lucky up your end of the oxford. They don't actually do any hedge cutting on our part of the moorings as we have our own gardens and do all our own maintenance but further up the moorings and the rest of the tow path, they leave thawns etc all over the path, not nice for dog walkers and cyclists.
When BWB used to have more staff on line they were brilliant and would clear all cuttings into little piles and burn them.
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But i point out again, not everyone buys all the canal mags so several mags with the same obit will reach a wider audience. we are selling the life story short by having to discuss the way to do it in the first place. It should be shouted from the roof tops along with all those lives that have been and gone from our history both modern and ancient.
IMO WW either print it or leave it, Ive read it on here and would like to know more
If you are ever in this area, you could come and meet Rose, she loves to talk about their boating days.
Wendy
I'm with Richard on this one -- a considerable part of the interest in obituaries (and part of the skill of a magazine editor in finding a good obituary writer) is to read personal anecdotes and reflections that throw light and insight on the subject and their life. To read the same "press release" in several mags is surely selling a person's life story short.The Obituary was not written by a professional but by a aquantance of Jack and Rose and I think Catherine did a JOLLY GOOD JOB.
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Waterways World will only post his Obituary, as long as it is not sent to any other magazines
I don't think that the others are so fussy. Which would you choose to get an Obituare printed in?Wendy
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Obituary: JACK SKINNER, canal boatman, 1919–2008
John Thomas (Jack) Skinner was born on 19 August 1919 into the close-knit community of boatpeople who earned their living transporting freight along the canals of the south Midlands. From a cottage in the canalside village of Braunston in Northamptonshire, Jack was taken on board his parents’ boat at the age of three weeks and spent the rest of his life on or by the water.
From his parents (John William Skinner and Ada, née Monk), Jack could trace his boating ancestry back more than 200 years. The Monk dynasty was founded by Thomas Monk of Dudley, one of the first canal carriers and boat builders (after whom the traditional narrowboats were named ‘monkey boats’). At least three generations of Skinners before Jack – his father John, grandfather Abel (based in Fisher Row, Oxford), and great-grandfather Samuel – had plied their trade on the Oxford Canal. His uncle and aunt, Joe and Rose Skinner, ran the last mule-drawn narrowboat (Friendship) on the Oxford Canal; but when, in 1946, Jack married Rose Hone (herself a member of a long-established canal family), the young couple began their married life on a boat fitted with a Bolinder engine.
In their early married life, Jack and Rose lived and worked on Kent and the butty boat Forget-Me-Not, delivering coal from collieries in Warwickshire to the canal wharf at Juxon Street in Jericho, Oxford, and the power station by the Thames in Osney. Barlow’s, the carrying company, paid them 3/9d per ton, which amounted to about £6 for a full load. The round trip took two weeks, and they were not paid for the week in which they returned empty. According to Jack, ‘It was a hard life. We used to work 16 or 17 hours a day, seven days a week, every day except Christmas Day. Many’s the time we set off before dawn and finished in the dark.’ Their first child was born in the winter of 1947, and they went on to raise three more children on the boat. Rose later recalled ‘You needed eyes in the back of your head’, but from the age of eight the children were trusted to steer the boats and helped their parents in many other ways.
Although coal was their staple cargo, the Skinners carried everything from timber to corned beef. During World War II Jack even transported a top-priority consignment of nitroglycerine, which he and his mate delivered through 153 locks up the Grand Union Canal from Brentford to Birmingham. (‘We did it in 63 hours, without stopping – kept going through the night, with a paraffin lamp on the front of the boat. There was enough in one of those bottles to blow up Birnigum with! That put years on me that did!’)
By the mid-1950s the Oxford Canal, which had been losing trade to the road haulage business since the war, was silting up for lack of regular dredging. There was talk of closing it, and public opposition was voiced at a protest meeting held in Oxford Town Hall on 3 June 1955, chaired by the poet John Betjeman. By this time Jack and Rose, on Redshank and Greenshank, were working for Willow Wren, a small independent carrying company. Jack recalled the epic journey that he and Rose undertook to prove that the canal was still navigable: ‘We put our heads together and decided the best way to save the canal was to prove that it could still carry traffic. So we brought 50 tons of coal from Nuneaton to Juxon’s wharf for Morrell’s Brewery. We did all right till we got to Dolly’s Hut [The Anchor Inn at Aristotle Lane]. The water there was very shallow, because the kids had thrown rubbish into it. We had to bowhaul the butty through [drag it along with a rope from the towpath], but we did it!’
In 1963 the Skinners moved to a cottage on the canal bank in Kidlington, and Jack got a job with the British Waterways Board, maintaining locks. In 1967 he helped to save the Oxford Canal from closure a second time. Treasury officials had recommended closing it down and filling it in, arguing that it was no longer commercially viable. Jack was asked to take Barbara Castle, the Minister of Transport, on a fact-finding trip from Thrupp to Lower Heyford. He
took the precaution of going out the night before and getting the co-operation of the lock keepers en route, to ensure that there would be enough water in the pounds to give the impression that there was more water in the near-derelict canal than there actually was. ‘She never knew the difference – and it done the trick’, he recalled with pride many years later. Mrs Castle decided to save the canal, ultimately securing enough subsidy to keep open 1,400 miles of commercially non-viable canals for pleasure cruising. Everyone who now enjoys fishing in the Oxford Canal, or cruising on it, or walking along the towpath should remember with gratitude Jack Skinner and the trick that he played on the Minister of Transport.
Jack died on 28 April 2008 at the age of 88. At his funeral service, tribute was paid to ‘the dapper man in the trilby hat, with an encyclopaedic knowledge of all things concerning canals … a man not afraid of hard work … a man not to be trifled with, who would do anything for his family’. He is survived by his wife Rose and their four children.
Catherine Robinson
12 May 2008
(authorised by Mrs Rose Skinner)
© Catherine Robinson 2008
12 Hayfield Road, Oxford, OX2 6TT
catherine.m.robinson@homecall.co.uk
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I assume the fuses are in the 12V supply line to the inverter, in which case why are there FOUR fuses (unless you have four separate 12V cables to share the load)?
What size are the fuses?
If the ratied running load of the spin dryer is 350W, I would suspect that it will be pulling 2-3 times that at start-up. Assuming that the fuses are sized for the continuous (600W) rating of the inverter, I would suspect that what is happening is that the start-up surge is putting a short-term overload on the inverter (which most are happy with) abut this is pulling a high current through the fuses albeit not for long enough for the fuses to blow. However, if this is the case, each surge will weaken the fuse slightly so after a certain number it will blow.
If this is the situation you have, the only solution would probably be to fit bigger fuses. However if doing this you need to be sure that the cables are OK for the maximum load that the inverter will take without shutting itself down, as the fuse rating could then be higher than that of the cables.
Peter
It has 2x 15 amp and 2x 20amp fuses in it, the blade ones they had started to melt
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Sherlock Holmes had a saying that: “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”
Your sinking mate. Abandon ship
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The spinner probably draws a lot more than 350W at start up.
BTW did you get to the bottom of your alternator problem in the end, is it charging the batteries OK?
cheers,
Pete.
No its still a problem, every time I start the engine I have to take the board off and touch 2 parts of alternator with wire, to get the light to go out, bit of a pain but have got used to it now!
Chris was great though, coming all this was to have a look for me.
The last week or so, with all this nice weather the solar panels have been doing great. My greed TV does not help!
Thanks for asking,
Wendy
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One way to eliminate the fact there is a hole in the hull somewhere is to put some food dye in the water all along the hull, on the outside, (both sides) and see if it comes in. If it doesn't, that will at least put your mind at rest.
Wendy
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We had the same problem with the same values you give. It appears that although 350 is the rated capacity it needs at least twice that on start up. We never really got to the bottom of the problem as sometimes it would work but mostly not. We ended up buying one of those twin tubs from Whilton and are delighted with the performance. We were sceptical about the spinner but in practice it is just fine.
Trouble is I have one of the camping washing machines that you can get a double quilt cover in and don't think that the one that you are on about is big enough? Could you say what sort of amount of washing it can cope with please.
Wendy
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WHATS HAPPENING for the second time now my spin dryer has blown all 4 fuses in my 600watt inverter. the spinner is only 350w, engine running at the same time and the only other thing I have on at the same time is a dab radio.
Took the spinner apart the last time it happened and everything looked fine, ie nice clean connections etc.
Anybody got any ideas, its not been used that much but out of guarantee now.
Wendy
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A washing up bowl with about 2" of sugar water on the roof will drown a fair few.
The trouble with putting things like jam, sugar water etc to kill them, is the fact that it attracts them to it.
As far as I know, they are good for pollonating plants.
I could not believe that I actually got stung by one this year, in the middle of March
I just put some vinegar on the sting and it hardly hurt. I don't believe in killing them though. -
One of the boats came past our moorings today, still had grass cuttings all over the side, probably got baked on in the heat.
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I was up at Thrupp the other day and noticed some boats on the visitor moorings had loads of grass cuttings, all over the sides of their boats.
This happened to me years ago and it was a hell of a job getting the grass off,
I don't suppose the boat owners would have been very happy, if they had just had their boat painted.
Wonder why TCC don't use mowers that have grass boxes on them.
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Alan in the corner above the clock there is a zoom application normal is !00%, if you click on the side slide next to the 100% you can expand up to 400%.
I have epanded the pic by 400% and can see evidence of overplatting.
Dave
I can't find this zoom feature you are on about, on my laptop?
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Unleaded petrol in Australia is currently around $1.42/l (it varies by around 15c/week). Diesel is anywhere from $1.62 - 1.69. The explanation from the oil companies is that there are 2 different world markets in operation, with the Chinese demand for diesel inflating the world price.
Are those prices for a lt ?
Does anyone know how much diesel and petrol costs a gallon in the States?
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I think you will be very lucky if you can find a mooring like that at that price for a 70ft boat. for example 60ft boat here, towpath mooring and no hookup, costs over £1700pa. Unless you can find a friendly farmer to let you moor on their land,
Good Luck
Wendy
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I'm not rough? am I?
And nor is Tim & Di.
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The new contract and conditions, is probably a way of getting rid of a lot of their mooring wardens.
The article said that there were piano keys strewn all over the beach. (Lizzie had a piano put in when she had the boat stretched in the early 80')
I don't think that the others are so fussy. Which would you choose to get an Obituare printed in?
I just put some vinegar on the sting and it hardly hurt. I don't believe in killing them though.
Diesel needed
in General Boating
Posted
89p a lt !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Managed to get some spent veg oil from a local pub yesterday. A friend of ours uses a mix of 80% spent veg oil in his Lister engine. hes been using it for over a year, he filteres it down to 5 microns, has pre filters etc. he advised me to strain the oil through a pair of good denim jeaan leg, with a jubilee clip at the bottom then filter it again to the 5 microns but only to start with a 25% veg oil mix for my Perkins