Tam & Di

We used to come loaded through Braunston/Blisworth on a short snatcher, but we once met a little boat coming the other way who panicked and slowed right down which meant he was sucked across behind me into the bow of the butty. I always used a 90' line after that, which gave people time to get back onto their own side. In Frenchland there are a couple of tunnels you are towed through. Riqueval is on the St. Quentin canal about 100 miles south of Calais. It's 6km long and the tug does 2 trips a day in each direction. The tug picks up electricity from overhead cables and pulls itself along with turns round its winch of a chain on the bottom of the canal. Loaded boats are put first in line, then empties, then anything like our 24m barge, and finally any yachts - crudely in order of weight. You hand one end of your 30m line to the boat ahead of you, and take the end of the line from the boat behind. It's about a 2 hour trip. As I steer from inside a nice warm shed the drips don't bother me, but Di does have the habit of boiling kettles or stock pots which puts condensation on the windows. There are lights and a towpath, and it is possible to get off and walk beside the boat, or behave like a vandal if you want to leave a lasting record of your passage.

We went to Bath and back with Towcester before the K&A had been restored, to deliver some stuff to the alternative Bath festival. On the way down we were in company with BWB's tug Severn Progress. He'd booked into Avonmouth overnight, and we spent the night on the Royal Yacht's berth before our run up the Avon next day. On the return trip we went down to Portishead to wait for the next tide, and were told where to anchor so we'd stay in a puddle at low water. Luckily I had several coal weights on board that served the purpose OK. I had a map with a dotted line that seemed to be the route we'd taken with Severn Progress and I followed that. I realised later that it was the county boundary! As you say, we were all young and foolish once.

I can only imagine it had far too little freeboard to start with - drains for the foredeck which would let water in if the boat dived just slightly, air cooled engine with the vents barely above normal water level so water could come in that way if the stern dug in too much or the boat lists, which would also stop the engine of course. No automatic bilge pumps. I've no idea if this craft had such design problems, but I've certainly come across them. It's possible to get away with very poorly designed boats when they are only used on little canals in fair weather. I've even come across people with dutch barges used on large continental canals who ask why they should have automatic bilge pumps, and I'm sure a lot of UK narrowboats don't.

What type of barge is it? Any photos?

I'm even more puzzled by one that comes up with the same link, that is a David Thomas 71'6" "modern reproduction motorised butty" at £85,000. I can understand someone with a butty/horseboat who wishes to motorise it, but to actually build a motorised butty seems very odd to me.

Depends slightly on what you mean by "Dutch barge". If you actually mean one built in the Netherlands and converted when it came out of trade it is probably rivetted steel/iron. The Dutch use much smaller rivets than we commonly do (did) in the UK, so if the plating is that thin the rivet heads could be suspect too. Certainly I would not accept anything less than 4.0mm. If the 2.9mm is fairly local and can be replated at an acceptable cost it may still be a good buy. £30,000 is not a lot of money for a barge in good nick, so it is bound to need quite a bit of work. It's just that for most people it easier to manage on a d.i.y. basis if the work is internal, as you can leave that and do it in stages, whereas it is very risky to ignore a thin hull, as you stand to lose everything if it sinks. If it is a rivetted hull do be sure your surveyor is familiar with that sort of construction. Ideally too be in attendance at the survey and get him to explain what he is looking at.

A bigger hammer? Sorry, could not resist that, and I'm sure someone will come along shortly with a more technical answer.

This is not necessarily so. However even if there is no ransom strip (i.e. BW do not own any strip of bank on the off side) you will still be charged for occupancy of the particular bit of water and land beneath it which does belong to them. This was determined by the case BW v Allen, Crennell and Shaw in about 1992, referred as the "end of Garden Moorings Case", and which was never taken to appeal.

That's Chapman's Farm at Ricky - but this Stocker's Farm, immediately below Stockers Lock. The farm was used for a 1970s BBC? version of Black Beauty.

My recollection too.

and even more out of date, this is what the fore end looked like in about 1973 when we hired it from Martin & Kris Toms for the barrel run before we had a butty of our own. The sterns of Mimas and Ray, then owned by Douggie Jones, are in the foreground - now beautifully restored again and appearing on the "Progress" thread recently.

Although obviously familiar with the term "byelaw" as meaning a legal requirement in a local context, I must admit I had not come across it as meaning the code governing members of a club or society. However my dictionary informs me: "By-law (sometimes also spelled bylaw, by law or byelaw) can refer to a law of local or limited application passed under the authority of a higher law specifying what things may be regulated by the by-law. It can also refer to the internal rules of a company or organization". I agree though that even with that definition it still comes over to me as something with legal implications rather than as a code of conduct for an association.

Hi People, Has anyone ever tried swimming across the Channel? I'm sure it must be possible. I guess there's probably been a lot of discussion about the topic, but I can't be arsed to search it and I just thought I'd waste everyone's time and blow a fart at their goodwill and helpfulness.

That looks the most likely. While you're about it though Biggles you may as well get the European Vessel Identification Number (ENI) which is 140 (for UK) followed by a 5 digit number, and which also comes from RYA. You have to have one of those so you can have an ATIS-enabled VHF (automatic transmission identification system, I believe) which is mandatory for continental Europe - 2 sets for Belgium and some other countries, even for small craft such as yours. The ENI number has to be displayed on a panel/board in 10cm letters for craft <20m.

Nor did a quick search on CWF. I'm wondering if he means ENI? That is a newly devised number that has to be assigned to a ship in order for it to have ATIS-enbabled VHF. The RYA is the body which allocates them. (Fun aren't they, all these initials)

I'm sure it's very important, but what is a HID? Why don't I have one?

Whoops - I should have looked properly at the photo. I'd just been reading a mail about the Biggles who is a CWF member and had that in my mind. John Best is in Germany with his Biggles, as you say, and has been over this side for 5 years or so now.

He's still fitting Biggles out, but apparently plans to come over in the Spring. The Locoboat pénichettes are quite good for what they are. Most people would probably want to do some refitting to make them suitable for private use, as they tend to be fitted to take the maximum number of hirers. It might be simpler for people in the UK to buy one from the Irish hirebase - probably much cheaper to get it to the UK from there.

They are the plaudits signified by a number in the green panel at the bottom right of a mail, and which you somehow managed to "get" with your first two mails on this thread which were to remind people about a boat you were telling them you did not want them to remember, and which it now transpires you can award yourself !!!!!!!

As I noted above, you don't really need to be able to look dead ahead over the load to steer a boat - look at photos in books and you will see the steerer commonly sat on one side vaguely looking forward. You get much of your information from peripheral vision and tops of trees/factory walls etc. The planks are anyway only about a foot wide, and you can see down beside them for working through locks or other times when fine steering is required. In horseboat days there would be virtually no small craft to get in your way - and you would know well in advance if another boat was coming in the opposite direction.

Hi, Sorry to hear of your parents - we did not know Margaret died last year. Give our best regards to Alan. Tam & Di m/v "Friesland"

Tim Wood - the Wood of Wood Hall and Heward - was in partnership with us at the time we owned and operated Farnworth, Ribble (at one time BWB Fair Lady), Mersey (John Liley's "Arthur") and Ironclad/Cadellis. Ribble of course went back to Burscough and is looking very smart still, but I think the others all got converted to houseboats and the bottom of the GU and the R.Lee.

If I look at someone's profile and see he has a "credit rating" of "x" I would assume he has sent mails which are generally seen as informative or that his views have some degree of support from other subscribers? If you can award them to yourself surely that means (or certainly implies) that it puts the owner of the site at risk every bit as much as the posts concerning e.g. vontel57 that have apparently been deleted? Wouldn't it be a good idea if awarding a greenie to yourslef automatically deleted that mail, or at least that awarding one to yourself was impossible? Surely not difficult to organise?

But he's got a greenie for the original post and his number 13! Surely it's not possible to give them to yourself?