MoominPapa

There were a few boats there when we passed yesterday, but it didn't look like anyone was living in any of them, and there were more empty spaces than occupied ones. There was Heras fencing blocking off all the mooring spaces and the whole place had an abandoned feel. MP.

Horninglow basin is looking very sad and neglected these days. MP.

... or two inches......... MP.

The bit of Barrowford visible from the flight was pretty low when we came through. MP

Hmm, feeling lucky to have escaped the L&L before that hit. Even if they can dam it and get pumps installed, I wonder if there's enough spare water to replace what's been lost in the short term? MP.

That would be about it The night was uneventful, and the weather today better than forecast. Biggest problem on board is back to, shall we leave the stove and be a bit chilly, or light the stove and be rather too hot. MP.

It was about this time in 2012, on a dark and stormy, rainy night, that the Trent and Mersey breached at Dutton. Tonight we're at the moorings created at the site of the breach when it was repaired. It's a dark and stormy night, and very rainy. MP.

It's connected to the stud, and is for a radio suppression capacitor. Not connecting it won't disable anything except possibly radio reception. MP.

Credit where credit is due. We came down the Wigan flight this morning, and it was an easy run. The flight is in a much better state than I remember the last time we used it, about five years ago. It still has a lot of copious pissers though. MP.

I shan't relax until I get to Middlewich. MP.

As I recall when we came through last week, that lock had the worst pissers of all of them, and they are mostly bad. Water leaking through the walls and into the surrounding soil when the lock is full and then running back into the lock, carrying soil with it when the lock is empty is not exactly difficult to diagnose, so the subsequent sink holes are not really an unexpected Act of God either. We passed a crew injecting foam into embankments in Burnley to try and fix leaks. Maybe they should have a go at locks too? MP.

My 70A alternator reduces to a 60A alternator as it reaches operating temperature. I don't think there's an explicit control path, it's just that the rotor current reduces as the windings get hot and their resistance increases. MP

Below is the graphs for the last month. Green is the Soc from Ah counting (ie something like what the BMV is calculating) blue is the Soc estimated from cell voltages, and purple is the output the algorithm that combines these, and what appears on the display in the engine room after it's converted to a percentage. You can see that the blue line does correlate reasonably well, long term. I'm not sure about the change from generally being higher than the Ah count to generally being lower, a week or two back. I suspect it may be due to lowering solar output as the weather worsens. (If the current metering read significantly high in 5-15A charge range that we get on a sunny day, for instance, that would explain things.) The other change is that we've been doing more engine running as we're moving more. MP.

Don't know the exact capacity, but not much. A litre is probably enough for at least two fills. MP.

We've come up from Leeds in the past couple of days. There was a grumpy CRT bod at Forge 3 who satisfied himself that one of the two boats going up wasn't a rank beginner hire boater and then disappeared into his bunker. Meanwhile at Newlay 3 there were four jolly vollies, having a great time; none of who seemed to be aware of the possibility that a 60' boat would need to tuck in behind the opposite gate to get the gates closed. At Dobson 2 there's a sign on the top gate beams instructing you not to fill the top lock whilst a boat is descending the bottom lock as the gates leak so much that it would put the boat in "serious danger". The sign doesn't say what an ascending boat which has no choice but to be in the empty bottom lock with the top lock full it expected to do. The answer we came up with is to get very, very wet and somewhat stressed. The boat coming up before us reportedly suffered a flooded bedroom. Dobson's 2 is not in the set locked overnight. Yesterday evening it was filled for swimming by the local youfa who brought their own windlass. To Bingley tomorrow! MP.

Long lines of moored boats, especially those with people living on them, seem to generate worse local weed growth. I guess it'sthe nitrates and phosphates in the grey water discharges to blame. MP.

We're moored at Castleford, and planning a quick diversion to Wakefield in a 60' narrowboat. I don't intend to try out the long boat diagonal on a short lock technique this time, so I'm trying to work out how far we can get. According to Nicholsons, it's to Broad cut, but looking on Google Satellite view, Thornes Lock, the one before Broad Cut, looks short too, but with a second set of gates to make it longer. So the question is can I get a 60' boat through Thornes lock in short mode? If not can I use the extra gates to make it long? If not can I wind on the river below Thornes lock, and if I can get through Thornes lock can I wind on the river below Broad Cut Low lock. Locals, please advise. Cheers, MP.

The clue is the "L" in LPG - liquid petroleum gas. Inside the cylinders it's a liquid, so you can pour it from one container to another and transfer the vast majority. Just connecting the valves with a pipe won't do this though, you need to invert the source cylinder, or use a cylinder with a dip tube that picks up the liquid from the bottom. MP.

Yet another toilet-tent cratch cover. MP.

Our boat was built in the early nineties and lived on by the first owners 'till the late nineties on the Staffs and Worcester. It still gets recognised as such around Kinver. Sorry. MP.

The amount of water to be passed through the lock each day comes from on-high, but when it's run through is not specified 🙂 The bywash at Ashline lock is an actively controlled sluice rather than a weir these days, so that may fight attempts to increase the level. MP.