alan_fincher

Many of you will know that we successfully reverted to owning just two narrow boats when we sold "Chalice" earlier this year. However, although we have owned "Flamingo" since late last year, it has taken until now for us to actually get our two boats "Sickle" and "Flamingo" together. So I took the opportunity of some pictures. Both are 1936 boats built for the Grand Union Canal Carrying Company by W J Yarwood and Sons of Northwich. However "Sickle" is a "Middle Northwich" "Star Class" boat, whereas "Flamingo" is a "Large Northwich" "Town Class" boat, ("Flamingo" was originally named "Letchworth" only becoming "Flamingo" in 1962 when purchased by Willow Wren). Apart from the obvious 31' 6" removed from "Sickle" in 1942, when she was converted to an ice-breaker, these pictures give some idea of the detailed differences between the two types. Also in some of the images is "Purton" yet another 1936 Yarwoods built boat, but in this case a "Town" that has been shortened to about 60 feet.

For anybody interested, some photostreams of the event here..... "ShepherdMoon's" Stream "Towcester News'" Stream Kathryn Dodington's Stream Cath with New Moon morris [Photo ShepherdMoon] https://flic.kr/p/urMBuo Us as Vikings [Photo ShepherdMoon] https://flic.kr/p/uJCTFt Sickle as Viking Boat [Photo: James Rudd] https://flic.kr/p/uDWZ2H More Vikings [Photo: James Rudd] https://flic.kr/p/tGThB2 Flamingo at her first event in our ownership [Photo: Kathryn Dodington] https://flic.kr/p/uzYSjL Sickle returns after Viking "raid" completed [Photo: Kathryn Dodington] https://flic.kr/p/uDvKud

Bletchley, I'm guessing. It got its signwriting just one day after this event ended, near where we moor Flamingo.

And I thought it was the scene where he neatly coils a mooring line and hangs it over the tiller pin!

Not that it helps those unable to access now, but I continued to get fatal errors when I tried accessing a few minutes ago. I have cleared my cache in the Firefox browser, and it now seems fine. I'm not clever enough to know what was happening, (!!!), but wonder if it was still using cached refgerences to the old site, until mI flushed out the cahe? Anyway, well done chaps!

Well we have achieved our target, and both our boats "Sickle" and "Flamingo" are now at Stoke Bruerne for this weekend's Family Festival. There is a good attendance of historic boats here. From memory, (though I'm sure I'll forget some) Bletchley Corona Cyprus Flamingo Joseph Jubilee Moon Owl Purton Sculptor Sickle Southern Cross Victoria Sickle will be taking part in this year's family display, and Cath and David, plus several other boater friends will be performing as New Moon Morris. Odin the dog will be keeping us all in good order, (or at least trying too!). I just hope today's weather forecast is being unduly pessimistic....................

The Beta tug engines are an attempt to make a modern engined have some of the appeal of an old one, but those I have heard sound more like a tractor than a narrow boat. Also some of these engines seem not to have been without issues. A 4 cylinder Gardner is in my view just too big for a leisure narrow boat. The two cylinder version is much more appropriate in my view, and will soungd "right" which a 4 cyliner engine will not. Clearly this is all a matter of personal taste, but if I'm going to have a proper engine room (whether on a modern or an historic boat), it matters to me to have something in it that is a proper narrow boat engine, or at least something that looks and sounds like it could be.

No, but I still have PMs that are several years old, so I rather doubt there is any automatic deletion by date. Could it instead have something to do with the rather good wines you are often mentioning?

Personally I would neither want a 4 cylinder Gardner, nor a Beta tug engine, so without delving further, the engine choice would deter me from either of this particular pair.

Personally I would neither want a 4 cylinder Gardner, nor a Beta tug engine, so without delving further, the engine choice would deter me from either of this particular pair.

Ah, I misread Sue's post that 50 foot was the lower points per mile, and you needed to be over 50 feet to get the higher. I now understand exactly 50 feet is the lowest length to qualify for the enhanced points. Sounds like I just sold what would have been an ideal boat this year, then!

Thanks. So, (provided they don't change it next year!), getting rid of a 50 foot boat should give us more points per mile then. Did (ex) working boats get any advantage this year, please?

You are wrong to be confident based on that test alone, I'm afraid.

For those of us not involved this year, could you please briefly explain the scoring? It seemed to me last year that with the factoring the miles by length, it made it very hard for anything other than a full length boat to win. i thought I saw that had now changed, but the winner was still full length, and other full lengths seemed to do well. So how was it actually done this year please..... .........Shuffles off realising that his master plan of swapping a 50 foot boat for a 71' 6" one might not have been such a good one after all!.........

The explanation for that, if correct, could be what might get injected at the gantry that makes if a specific Shell, Esso, etc branded product, rather than somebody elses. The base gas oil is the same thing in each case,almost invariably taken from the same tank, but extra things may then get added to it as the tanker is loaded. That is a totally different (and accurate!) statement, from suggesting (quite erroneously!) that supermarket diesel might be some kind of butt-end dregs lewft in a tank not suitable for sale as a a branded product. At no point have I, (at least) suggested that if you buy (for example) Tesco diesel that it has exactly the same things added to the base product as (say) Shell diesel, (or even Sainsbury's diesel). I know it may not, and, of course, enhancing the product with various performance additives may benefit some cars that are particularly sensitive to the fuel in use. When I designed and put together the systems that actually record all this kind of stuff, I had to know exactly how the processes at distribution depots work, and stood and watched them in action on many occasions. Actually, few trained experienced mechanics will ever have been exposed to the detail of what goes on in a fuel oil distribution depot to the same extent as an office boy who has to design the systems that report numbers worth tens of millions of pounds, including all the fine detail about the added components at a level required to satisfy HMRC! (Unless of course they have spent time in both occupations!)

Being pedantic, this generally doesn't happen at the refineries, but at the distribution depots. On the whole road tankers don't load at a refinery. Even if they load at a location that also has a refinery there, they will still load at a separate distribution depot alongside, which will have its own tankage. They would not be drawing directly from refinery tanks.

This sounds frankly ridiculous. Most delivery road tankers fill up several times a day. The companies share common gantries, and any any time the DERV drawn by all of them will be getting drawn from a particular tank, that happens to be as full as it happens to be. The system couldn't work if it relied on different retailers only being able to fill when a tank is at a particular state of fill. Anyway it would be highly unusual that a tank is filled from a pipeline, then near emptied before it is refilled, I think. The likelihood is that when a tank is nowhere near empty the next product will be put into it, because the usual objective is to carry many days stock at a terminal, not to run the tanks near empty, so that if there was a supply problem they were in danger if running out. I call the bluff of the person who used to be in the motor trade. Alan, who used to work on the stock control systems for oil distribution depots, and has regularly watched operations at the oil terminals, including the trucks loading......

If Sickle were idling at 600 RPM, I wouldn't half upset a lot of the "please pass on tickover" brigade, if I were to follow their instruction to the letter!

Try talking to Marine Engine Services at Uxbridge who are Lister specialists. However, I'm not sure what latest situation is, as I'm told that the business is being run down, and that they are, or will be selling off their stocks of parts. But a phone call could yield what you are after?

Very rough sums.... 1000 litres of water weighs a tonne. 70 foot working boats gain about an extra inch of draught for every ton(ne) loaded evenly into them. So if you put a ton(ne) of water at one end of a boat that will have well under half the buoyancy of a working boat, I would expect the change of draught at that end to be more than 4 inches. Realistically I think the difference in draught between tank completely full and tank completely empty could be as much as 6 inches. That could be quite a significant difference in a boat that is only 33 feet long. If you are thinking of using one of those (roughly) metre cubed agricultural containers there are two further things to consider.... 1) The centre of gravity when full is in the middle of the tank, so over half a meter from the bottom of the boat, this is likely to make the boat more tender, and roll more. 2) There will be no baffles in the tank, so once you do start rocking side to side, particularly if the tank is somewhere in the 70% - 90% full range, Then I think that could also adversely affect things. I wouldn't recommend use of anything tall that will inevitably regularly be part full in use.

Blimey, you are right, aren't you - just looked it up. I made a duff assumption that as an HA3 uses 12.5 litres, then an HA2 would be no more than 10 litres. So the extra cylinder only adds about 1.7 litres then.

As an aside, my experiences have shown Vactan and Fertan to be very different beasts. Vactan does what it says it does, but our use of Fertan was a rub out. It says if you apply it, and let it convert, it will act as a primer keeping rust at bay until you overcoat. We laboriously stripped down a gunwale and fully coated it with Fertan, which seemed to convert OK. However when we came back the next day, the entire surface had rusted over, and we had to take it all back to metal and start again. The Fertan got binned.

Yes, it surprises me that people choose this particular volunteering opportunity, and I know at some locations they have struggled to find anybody who wants to. However, each to their own, and it must appeal to some. This is from our March meeting..... Oh that's bloody good, isn't it, as it directly contradicts the previous meeting where it was stated......

I must admit that that is how I thought we were told it would work the whole way trough the SEVM debate. I didn't think CRT people were generally expected to be involved in daily recording - I was expecting it to be volunteers, (or Jeff Whyatt, as it turned out!) (There was a statement that volunteers would have no role in enforcement, of course, but I don't think we are talking about anything to do with enforcement here.) Is it possible to know who that was plaese, so I can ask Matthew Symmonds why Batchworth is now apparently on the list when he said it would not be?

That's what I think he has implied, isn't it? Thanks - I'm now tempted, as I have at least one more here, I think, so 10 litres would be enough for a change.