MoominPapa

Has anyone successfully booked a passage through the Anderton Boat lift recently? It doesn't seem to be an option in the drop-down menu on the "book a passage" page for me. MP.

A couple of years ago we were in the drydock at Northwich when the control system for the Vale Royal sluices had a bit of brainstorm and emptied the top end of the river in fairly short order. The resulting artificial flood coming backwards through the emptying sluice started to fill the drydock, which caused some consternation. I believe at least one boat was sunk above Vale Royal by the sudden drop in level. MP.

I once met a CRT tug in the middle of Braunston tunnel with a standard tunnel light on the front of it. I'd already met the unlit pan it was pushing 70ft earlier, which was quite a surprise! MP.

All the hire boat operators I've spoken to have problems with hirers running out of power. Many hirers these days are not on a 12-hour day mission; they're using the boat as vaguely movable air-bnb. They expect all the electrical things to work and don't have the knowledge or motivation to manage a set of batteries and do the off-grid thing. The easiest way for operators to avoid call outs for no lights and beeping fridge in the middle of the night is to specify that the engine must be run 8 or 10 hours every day. MP.

I always find that Mars and Jupiter are really difficult to start after a long shutdown. MP.

It's difficult to conceive of a lamp or LED that will pass enough current to light at 5v, but won't be destroyed by 240v when L and N are actually reversed. I think we need more information. MP.

If the indicator is an actual neon bulb, then it is, to all intents and purposes, an insulator as long as the voltage across it is below the strike voltage, which is about 90v. Using an LED or incandescent lamp instead of a neon would be bad, for the reason you describe. If the neutral earth voltage is above 90v then you really want to know about it. MP.

Today, it's sunny and still. I shall go and inspect the vegetable plot later with crossed fingers. MP.

Ireland hasn't named any either, AFAIK. It's been pretty windy and wet here in County Wicklow today, but my main beef is that it's gone very cold again. We even had sleet briefly. Bring back spring! MP.

Flat battery? MP.

From experience, I'd take a guess at diode failure because it's been working hard. Alternators in boats, especially with LiFePO4 batteries work really hard and hot and the diodes are the first thing to go. It's normally only one though, which makes the alt noisy and reduces power, rather than stopping it completely. It's worth carrying a spare alternator, they are not very expensive. When you have a failure change to the spare and get the faulty fixed or fix it yourself at leisure. You can run the engine with the faulty alternator on place and belt fitted, but not if you've remove it and the belt. MP

The G&S is dotted with keeper-operated swing bridges. You can move as much as you want at night, but once you get to a swing bridge your boat won't go under, the navigation is effectively closed until there's a worker there to open it. I doubt they've ever been open 24/7, and certainly not in living memory. MP.

https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/about-us/where-we-work/wales-and-south-west/gloucester-and-sharpness-canal-and-river-severn-navigation-summer-2023-changes Whatever happened to the scheme to boater operate the bridges via a mobile phone? MP.

I read somewhere that the 2G network is being retained for such telematics, it's the 3G network that's going. I wonder what network my robot lawnmower uses? MP.

You'll be amazed when you hear what the neurological effects of lead are. MP.

We came down Watford during the Beast from the East to escape the Leicester Line before it closed in February. You don't normally notice that the lock chambers are tapered and wider at the top than the bottom, but when the boat goes into the full lock with a load of broken ice, you do. We jammed in every lock and had to flush the boat out. Cold over there, isn't it? It's 10 Celsius here in the County Wicklow, but a large cloud seems to have moved into the garden. MP.

The switch should be break-before-make, and never connect both source at the same time. I'd go further and say that it _is_ break-before-make. If it wasn't, you would have blown up your inverter and tripped your show power by now. MP.

It's only a few feet. The existing high current cables all terminate in a cupboard in the engine room on the bulkhead between the engineroom and the back cabin, so the cables just have go through that bulkhead to reach the batteries on the other side. Long cables have to be fat, and long, fat, cables are expensive. MP.

+1. Our Thunderskys are very content under the bed. The space in the engine room where the LAs used to hang out are now extra tool storage. MP.

MoominPapa is aware, and cogitating. These days, such plans have to start with getting the crew back into the country and proceed with getting the vessel to the start line. MP.

I seem to remember coming across a pipeline crossing of the S&W downstream of Dimmingsdale Lock in the form of a self-supporting arch over the canal. It was possible to hear the liquid flow if you put an ear to the pipe. At the time a wasted an hour or so on the internet and worked out where it was likely going from and to, but I can't remember now. Infrastructure like this is fascinating, but scarily unprotected. MP.

The bridge over the tail of Wharton's lock on the Chester line carries a GPSS pipeline. The markers are easy to see. I guess its immediate ends are probably Stanlow Oil refinery and the wartime oil depot beside the railway at Beeston, opposite Chas Hardern's boatyard. I remember as a kid in the sixties going along there on my Grandad's boat and the grass mounds over the oil tanks were all mowed and maintained. Now it looks pretty derelict. MP.

This came up in my youtube feed today. Not strictly boating, but the S&L connection gives a bit of an excuse, and I'm sure many here will be interested. Most will have heard of PLUTO, but there are lots of fascinating details in the film which I didn't know about. MP.

Good points. I'd still rather do Northgate staircase than Grindley Brook. The later always seems to land me on the bottom of the middle chamber and require faffing with water levels, no matter what I do. MP. It may have been December, but we still managed to get hit by an out-of-control dayboat. MP.

There's nowt wrong with the locks on the Chester Line. The locks on the Llangollen were no fun at all during the Big Freeze. MP.