Tam & Di

You're probably right. We operated a large range of craft in the UK from freight narrowboats, passengerboats, tugs and barges to small coasters. None of these had a bow thruster and I never thought they would be useful. With our 24m motorbarge for use in continental waters I did fit one. I find I mostly use it as an instructor's override when a trainee tries to ram a lockside, but do find it useful when reversing a couple of kilometers to a winding hole. Unfortunately we see a hell of a lot of inexperienced barge owners here who seem to rely on their bow/stern thrusters rather than learning to use a wheel (tiller, to those in the UK!). Their electric ones give them a false sense of security. Obviously it would be better to learn to steer properly, but they've paid their money to the builder so they do not have to do that. I'm still unconvinced of the necessity on UK canals, but that is another argument. It probably relates to the poor handling characteristics of modern craft as much as to lack of skill of a steerer.

Tear it all out and fit a hydraulic one. Hydraulics can be used virtually non-stop if necessary, as with a JCB. I have to concede that bow thrusters are useful when you are reversing some long distance, but you need something powerful that you can rely on, not a kitchen vent-axia fan.

But if you click on ANSER in that link they seem to be referred to as towing rings! Someone else with a peculiar idea of their function?

Sorry Tim, I'd forgotten you put that on and was only thinking of the picture of the Ian Kemp one. None of it is going to infuence Robin2 as his game is to get people annoyed, not to find anything out.

But that was not an old boat either. I worked narrowboats from the late 60s and knew plenty of "born and bred" boat people from some 12 years prior to that. Not ancient history maybe, but certainly from times before Steve Hudson and other repro builders were around. I said my piece but you are just a wind up merchant and I can't be bothered to add more. Those of us who know, know. You come in with the absurd idea that Hudson's rings were based on earlier ones that were for lifting a boat (not a thing that a working narrowboat commonly had done - why would it?), you'd not heard of a back end rail, nor side cloths, nor really anything much about working narrow boats at all, nor any of the techniques involved in running one. If you have a realistic point please make it, otherwise go back to wherever you came from.

As you discount every response you don't like, why not write/e-mail Hudson and ask him. None of us will convince you.

Some bits of apparatus are not made with one specific use in mind. Narrowboats will generally have a t-stud at the fore end. How many variants of use can you think of for them? Let's just start with tying to the bank, hanging a bow fender on, to put a line on which holds the fore end of two boats together, to take a line from here to a craft in front when being towed, hanging a bottle of white wine on so it is in the water and cools down ........ This is another bit of kit you certainly don't use as a lifting point on the end of a crane though. I must say that it struck me as odd that the OP wants the rings although he did not know their name or function(s) - whether he will be any wiser now is a matter of conjecture at this point.

Aaaaaaaaaagh! I hope I look a bit better now. That must be after the end of 1973 as they were wooden barrels till then. I can't remember when I put new doors on Towcester and I seem to have mislaid my logbooks at the moment. In fact everything looks pretty grotty in that photo - there's not even any brass on the chimney. I don't even know why I'm singled out - we'd normally go up abreast in short pounds. Thanks for putting it on though - I've not seen it before.

As usual there is a lot of dogmatic nonsense written by people who don't have an original working narrow boat and have not looked properly at one. Unfortunately I think Steve Hudson may be amongst these as he does not appear to understand what a rail is for and has put something on his craft that does not really serve the same purpose. I suppose it's a bit like someone sticking metal blobs on a hull 'cause they thought that boats have metal blobs, without realising that the real ones were rivet heads which hold the boat together. A back end rail is multi functional and many of the potential uses have now been mentioned. Leo is correct too that they are sometimes used when loading. You tie a heavy weight, known as a log, to a line dropped over into the other craft and this can hold the two boats together without having to constantly adjust the length of lines. We used 56lb weights, but a heavy bit of timber would serve the same purpose. We also learned to use them when we were breasted up on the tideway. If you breast up conventionally the boats can come apart at the bottom and lean in against each other, sometimes with disastrous results. We took a long line from the rail under the two boats and back to the rail to prevent this. I don't imagine the original design brief (by which I probably mean pencil sketch on the back of an envelope) limited them to any one purpose - they are just generally useful "thingeys".

But as this boat has no side decks it presumably would require a bit of walking on water to do that, and I don't think that trick's been done for a couple of thousand years now.

Possibly - it depends on how close to the bank you can get. In fact of course if it is deep enough to come alongside you actually have to keep the boat away a bit so you can get a shaft to the blades. Especially the case if you've got a load on or if the bank is a bit high, otherwise your shaft is at too steep an angle. The nearest I've ever come to having to be in the water was to put a plank from the bank onto the top of the rudder and reach under from there. Anyway, despite blizzard's assertions I've never felt need for a weed hatch on any of the craft we have worked through the ages.

Sorry, no. We just live in totally different worlds. A boatman's long shaft is a standard boatpole about 16' long - no sharp inner edge. The bit you miss is that we (and I think I speak for generations of working boatmen on the canals) had no great difficulty removing the majority of rubbish from the blades. "Weed" hatches were a much later invention, specific to pleasure boats owned by people who probably don't even have a long shaft. I think they were probably first introduced on hireboats, and the hire company would certainly not want to refer to them as a "barbed wire" hatch. Another possibility, especially if it is rope around the blades, is to hook the shaft into it, put the engine in the appropriate gear and decompress it, and have someone turn it over with the starting handle. Do you know what a starting handle is? Sorry, being a bit snotty. As I said, your canal is nothing like mine. A weed hatch would NOT have made our lives easier.

I think my point was that I never found it a problem getting rubbish off the blades with a long shaft other than a couple of times where we picked up a great entanglement of barbed wire and on another occasion a sprung bed base. I would not have wished to tackle those without being able to see exactly what I was doing - certainly not either in the water or through a narrow box. You'd probably need arms at least three feet long anyway Why are they known as weed hatches, by the way? Surely they should be shopping trolley hatches or old rope hatches.

What happened to the art of getting rubbish off the blades using a long shaft? Working narrowboats do not have weed hatches, but I've never been in the water to clear the blades. My view of water is that it is all very well for floating boats in and washing in it, but going into it or drinking it is a step too far. I admit we did have to put the motor on the cill a couple of times to cut barbed wire off, but I would not have wanted to do that either in the water or via one of these weed hatch thingeys.

I queried this earlier, and I suspect that WotEver's suggestion is correct. To teach grandmothers to suck eggs, or alternatively to avoid potential embarrassment in future Roxy - the bit of hull which is almost certainly flat and forms the bottom of the boat is generally called "the bottom". If you lift up a bit of the floor you stand on you will probably see it, and the space between the floors and the boat's bottom is known as the bilge. You don't generally expect to have water there, but it can happen in the bits of boat outside of the accomodation (or if you have a leak!), and boats mostly have a bilge pump there to get rid of it. Bilging your bottom out sounds like a very painful medical procedure.

??????? I'm intrigued. What on earth is this operation? Did he keep a straight face when he told you he'd done that?

Also both GUCCC and FMC experimented with motor wide boats to operate between London and Birmingham. We owned the wooden 12'6" x 74' (yes) ex GUCCC Progress and cruised it extensively on all the interconnected wide waterways available in the '60s including the Grand Union to Sampson Road. It failed as an experiment as it could not pass another boat in the bridge holes or tunnels so the journey times were too long. Sort of wandering into the thread on priority at bridges, when we started freight boating with narrow boats in '71 we met and passed other loaded boats in Grand Union bridge holes on several occasions. I suspect channel depths and maybe even gunnite on the underside of bridge makes that less possible now, but it was the norm, so I could well understand why wide boats did not work on that route.

You're presumably talking about Thames and other river locks, where this could occur. I guess I'd expect the other boats to have their own fenders rather than putting my own out for them which anyway may not even be any good for their size or type of boat. I just don't like the idea of having a lot of unecessary things dangling over the side that might get snarled up with stuff (like other boats' fenders on locks)

I can understand having a fender at each quarter on a straight sided boat such as the wide beam one shown, i.e one pair forward on either side and another pair aft, ditto. That means that coming into a lock or quay the fore end can run against the wall without scratching paintwork, or the stern can when the boat slews as you hold back. What purpose do the others serve? (especially as the craft does not appear to be 14' wide, and there is therefore plenty of room between the hull and most UK "wide" locks).

OK, you already "know" you can do it so you don't want to listen to any of the answers. Do your own sums - why expect people who are telling you it is not a practical idea to work out the costs for you. You "mite" be thinking madness there but hey ho come on dont be so bloody lazy - do your own homework.

I see that another barge owned by 'newbies' has run into difficulties. The report says that the accommodation was not watertight, which seems a bit thoughtless if you want to make such a passage. wells lifeboat rescue

Do I take that as an offer then?

My fantasy boat would be the one I've got. What I would put on it though would be a magic cupboard where I could reach in for an expert engineer/carpenter/plumber/painter (especially a painter, just now!)/electrician/dogsbody every time I need one, thus allowing myself some leisure time.

I use exactly the same type in the little sump that our basins and shower empty into, and also in the stern compartment which gets drips and grease from the stern gland and have never had problems. For the basin/shower waste tank I put a strainer guaze in the tank between the water inlet/outlet and the float switch. That means that crud never comes into contact with it. (designed it myself - can I patent it?) For the stern compartment I've got the switch mounted so it comes on (and goes back off) at a level an inch or two higher than the pump will pick up. That means the pump does not put any oil which is floating on the service into the canal. I have a warning light that tells me when the pump is operating, so I can then deal with any problem but also I can pump the last bit of contaminated water into a container for safe disposal. Putting oil into the water here is a hanging offence.

I was going to ask if you had looked at what inland boating actually involved. A lock on the Thames needs very little physical effort compared to canal locks in the UK. Nor, although they are very different, to locks in France, Holland etc. You may well find someone on this forum who will let you go with them for a while. Also if you look at the DBA site as I suggested previously there may be someone with a barge here in France willing to do the same.