MoominPapa

That's the last route from the Weaver to the rest of the world gone then. Better start digging from Winsford towards the Middlewich branch. MP.

Surely the Calcutt pump discharges into that pound? MP.

I misspoke above: it was Curdworth top that we had to run water down. I think that was just because there had been no movements through the top lock and nothing going down the bywash, so the pound below the top lock had leaked down. Why the five miles from Minworth to Curdworth was, and still is, so low is a mystery to me. Faulty pumps keep getting mentioned (and were to us in February) but where are these pumps? Surely the supply to that section comes from Birmingham via Aston, Garrison and Perry Bar? Just outside the tunnel is definitely the shallowest spot in the pound. Spot dredging there would massively improve its resilience to low levels. MP.

Whatever is causing this, it isn't the lack of rain and hot weather. The same problems were present in February when we came through and spent a day stuck on the lump downstream of Curdworth tunnel, and then had to run a load of water down Minworth top lock to get under the bridge by the old wharf. MP.

Repeating granny/eggs. But all of these I've seen, the bar _raises_ as the terminal is tightened, so the bottom of the tunnel is irrelevant. The terminal is open when the screw is fully anticlockwise and the bar is at the bottom, furthest away from the side where you insert the screwdriver. Put the wire in and tighten the screw clockwise. The bar raises and clamps the wire between the bar and "top" of the tunnel. MP

Apologies if I'm teaching granny to suck eggs, but are these terminals the "stirrup" type, where the screw moves a square hoop of of metal? The actual terminal and the incoming wire go in the centre of the hoop and as the screw is tightened, the loop moves and the wire is caught between it and the terminal. When the terminal is open, you see a hole with a bar of metal across it, and it's remarkably easy to get the wire on the wrong side of the bar, with the result that the wire is not clamped at all when the screw is tightened, especially when you can't actually see the hole the wire goes into. The best way to get this right is to back the screw off all the way. Then the bar is all the way to one side of the hole, and you can't accidentally get the wire on the wrong side of it. MP.

I could have done, or I could have claimed on my own, comprehensive, insurance and my insurance co could have claimed the costs back from the owner of the sunken boat. But he was a fellow moorer who had just had his boat trashed and no recompense, so I didn't feel like kicking a man who was down. The lesson is to have comprehensive insurance, that solves the problem if you are the third party; it becomes your insurer's problem. Agreed. When I found out about this we were boating in the Fens and I remember thinking one day whilst waiting for Salter's Lode lock to empty that if the boat sank halfway out of the lock, stopping the guilotine gate from sealing, everything for miles behind me would be flooded as the tide came in, and I would be on the hook for the whole lot if the insurance co. could prove that the sinking was due to faulty maintenance. MP.

I am not a lawyer, but that is my understanding, yes. MP.

There's a subtle misunderstanding here. It's not that boat insurance policies don't cover third party liabilities (they have to, in law) , it's that they don't cover third party liabilities if the insurer breaks the contract of insurance. Examples may make this easier to understand. If I get into my comprehensively insured car pissed as a fart, set off down the M1 and crash into another car, the insurance company will not pay out for the damage to my car, even though it's comprehensively insured. That's because the accident was caused by my negligence and there's a clause in the insurance policy that covers that eventuality. It will, however, still have to pay out for the damage to the car I hit, because the road traffic act says it must. If my boat sinks because I haven't maintained it and there's a rust hole in the gas locker floor, the insurance company will similarly not pay out, because there's a clause in the policy that says the boat must be maintained and it wasn't.. The difference to the car example is that if the sunken boat leaks the contents of the diesel tank and strips the blacking off the waterlines of marina full of boats, the same clause atill renders the policy void, and the insurance company will not pay for the third party owners of those boats to get them re-blacked. The first example is hypothetical, the second definitely happened to me (I was one of the third parties). The clause in the British Waterways act analogous to the one in the road traffic act that says BW and it's successors can insist on third party insurance is the same as the one in the road traffic act, except that it misses out the stipulation that third party cover must be unconditional. To the best of my knowledge all marine insurance policies take advantage of this. When I was affected it was certainly the case that the sunken boat's insurance did, and I asked my insurers and the same was true of them. MP. ETA. The relevant part of the RTA is section 148. There is no analogous clause in the BW act.

The legislation for motor vehicle insurance mandates this cover for third parties. The corresponding legislation for boat insurance doesn't. If you read the relevant clauses in the two laws, it's clear that they are copy-and-paste, but the bit about third parties has been removed from the British Waterways act, or added to the road traffic act. Motor vehicle insurance is not, therefore, a "closer fit". It would seem to be, and it surprised me when I found out it wasn't, but that is certainly the case. MP.

Battery charging is a chemical reaction, and (most) chemical reactions get exponentially faster as the temperature increases. See: the Arrhenius equation. MP.

Grants lock bottom gate was warped and only just opening enough to get a boat past when we went south last week and when we returned a couple of days ago. It's possible someone go a bit too enthusiastic trying to push a slightly fat boat past, or had too many people leaning on the balance beam to get the last half inch of opening. Or someone failed to stop whilst entering the lock when full and just hit it. Given the level of fuckwittery I've witnessed going to Oxford and back, nothing would surprise me. If this one doesn't get you, Pigeon Lock probably will. One top paddle in action; takes 30 minutes to make a level. The pound between Slat Mill and Bourton locks that was empty last week is still low, probably because the cill at Bourton is basically blown and the bottom gates leak so much that it still leaks down fast, even with the blown cill filling it. On the other hand, ignore the closure notice for Duke's cut. The top paddle is US, but the top gate leaks so much that it makes a perfect level in 15 minutes. Twice as fast as Pigeon! MP.

Melaleuca is at our new mooring at Shuckborough, which is a bit short of depth. We got the boat last night and found her sitting pretty much flat on the mud with the level maybe four inches lower than the tide mark on the hull. Hoping they fix this otherwise we're going to need a snatch to get off the mud into the channel. Unexplained low pounds does seem to be a bit of an epidemic. I suspect the number of people on the ground sorting stuff out is much reduced. MP.

Again? End of Feb, we were stuck for a day on the shallow lump downstream of Curdworth tunnel and then had to spend an hour running water down Curdworth top lock to get enough in the next pound to grind under the bridge. CRT told us the problem was a pump down, but nobody here can see how that pound is supplied by a pump. Looks like the problem is ongoing. MP.

Those are really dire efficiency figures for a DC-DC converter. Better than 90% is easily attainable. MP. ETA of course you're talking current and not power, if the B2B lets the alternator output run up to 16V or 17V and is charging at 13.6 then it's doing pretty well. Has anyone measured that?

In my experience a 70A A127 can handle max load indefinitely* if it (and therefore its fan) is spinning fast enough and it's in reasonably cool ambient air. *longer that the time taken to reach thermal equilibrium. If it's not gone pop by the time it has stopped getting hotter, the time is no longer important, except possibly for second-order reliability effects. Conversely, and again from experience, there's a reason which the electric windscreen demist in Fords has a timer. If you don't have a functional heater and keep switching the demist back on when it turns of so that you can see where you are going, the alternator will go supernova. MP.

We got stuck in a 2'10" deep boat with the pound on weir last month. The boat was pivoting on the stone at the stern so it was fairly easy to slew the bow around and get crew off to dump another lock full of water down to lift the boat. It's mostly OK, but if you're deep and pick the wrong line it will still bite. MP.

Not very original. A boat got several years out of the same strategy on Peterborough embankment. MP.

As a data point, my home system: 6kWp, 60% south facing 40% west facing, has been doing 15-20 kWh during the nearly full sun days this week. Based on that, I tend not to believe the top line of the table and I'm dubious about the second, but the others look pretty feasible. MP.

That bloke looks just like me, only with less gut and more hair. Uncanny! MP.

Looks pretty much as you described it. There are "men working" signs either side on the towpath and orange buoys next to them in the water, but no explicit signs. The sheet is still flapping about in the water; one end is weighted down with rocks on the offside bank. Rothens boats are on site, but no sign of Rothens doozers. Pound stayed up fine overnight, so the culvert leak may be fixed. MP.

Will report back. The only sign I can see from here is a "men working" road sign on the towpath.

Those works are just in front of us. The sheet is visible on the offside bank, so that may have it place now. I shall be sure to pass in neutral if there's any water left in the pound to float in in the morning. Thanks for the heads-up. MP.

Maybe I've been bullshitted. Anyway, the activity running water down Minworth did yield a marginal increase in levels and I managed to redistribute enough mud to be able to slither over the remainder and get to Curdworth top lock without further problems. The long pound between Curdworth Lock 1 and Curdworth Lock 2 was 18 inches down. We had to fill it up to about 8 inches down to be able to grind under the A446 bridge, which definitely reversed the level increase in the Minworth-Curdworth pound. Since we've seen only one other moving boat in the last week, and he will be away up Minworth long since, I didn't feel too bad. After the top pound, the rest of Curdworth is fine (so far). Moored for the night between 6&7. MP.