Tam & Di

..... and become legally liable for any damage which might subsequently occur to the moved craft.

My official line is 22mm Nelson spun polypropylene, but I suspect parcel string might be the answer from most n/b owners. I don't know if UK river navigations have anything to say in their by-laws, but just about all the continental countries say something to the effect that the owner of any moored craft must allow another to tie alongside unless that would impede navigation, and that the owner must permit the crew and occupants of that vessel access to the shore across theirs. Or did you mean breasting up while under way? i know commercial vessels have to have an on-board dinghy or life craft, but this is ridiculous!

Your best bet would be to ask Gary Ward, as suggested, or to ask on one of the Dutch Barge Assn lists (DBA The Barge Association: http://www.barges.org). We had Arthur plus a couple of other L&L short boats and as noted these are 14'3" so are not a good comparison. We also owned the 74' x 12'6" GUCCC wideboat Progress long before that and took her to Sampson Road. (got a photo of her pretending to come out of the narrow lock there somewhere!) We went through the tunnels in the night - it was in the 60s and before mobile phones existed but we sent someone on a bike over the tunnel to stop traffic entering at that end, then after a suitable delay came on through with a decent headlight so we could be seen. We converted Progress at Cowley, and gained a lot of free timber from the lighters that still come up to Uxbridge at that time. They were often loaded too high, and lost quite a few planks from the top edges of the load at Bulldog Bridge (Benbow Way). We could then follow them on up and get some more at Shovel Bridge. Widths have changed here and there, especially as old bridges were gunnited, but those two would still mean you need to take care - it depends not only on your air draft of course, but the width of the wheelhouse roof if you can't drop it. It depends too on the depth of the hull - if the side decks are quite high you might catch the front corners of those too. We had an 80' x 14'6" Trent motor barge Clinton that we used for freight on the Thames, and brought that to our yard at Bulls Bridge via the Regents and Paddington Arm (too wide to come up from Brentford). We fixed tyres on either side of the coamings at the fore end to avoid damage in the tunnels. I'm not sure that she would pass the North Circular aqueduct now it's been rebuilt.

Doubling the foam thickness will not double the insulation properties, as noted. It does make a difference - just not twice as effective. I had 2" foam in our 24m x 4.2m barge (to mix my units!) and we require very little heat input to keep it pleasantly warm in winter. It's fairly simple to make up some sort of temporary double glazing effect - even heavy curtains can be quite effective. As someone else observed, our major problem is that I did not use any form of insulation on the underside of our wooden floor, and it is cold underfoot without having thick rugs. The labour element is quite a large percentage of the spraying costs, so why not get a quote for 1" and another for 2" and make up your mind then.

The "back end" of a working boat is the back end of the hold, where the back-end rail is, not the very rearmost bit of the boat itself, i.e. the stern. It took me a while to work out exactly what was being described. I did realise that it was probably talking about the stern, but the picture in my head was of four sausage shaped thins hanging down around the counter.

In that instance more likely just to wave gaily and tell him "see you next Tuesday!"

Yes, Cowley near Uxbridge, by the Shovel pub, where George Mercer was the lock keeper till the 60s. Our first canal boat was the 74' wideboat Progress which we had moored at Bulldog Bridge (officially Benbow Way Bridge) just along the canal from there. Whoever told you it was not possible to swing a 60' boat was mistaken, unless either you were not turning immediately below the lock where it is widest, or something has been reconfigured there in recent years (which would surprise me).

Can't understand that, unless there were boats moored at the apex of the turn. I've chucked round there with an empty pair abreast, getting a good swing going and then going into stern gear and using the momentum of the butty to help me round, but also not touching either bank. So it has to be at least 74'. In fact when I think of it I've winded Progress there too, and that is a 74' x 12'6" ex-GUCCC wooden wideboat - I did pivot on the stem with that. The photo under consideration makes it look like it will be pretty windy there, so you could hang onto the rails at the apex, with a line either from the bow or the stern as it comes, and let the wind take you round - a good old fashioned technique known as "winding", that is!

We're in danger of running a mutual admiration society here, but again I totally endorse what you say, and again it is a thing we emphasise with our trainees. A steerer is responsible for his own boat. Meeting an 80m+ ship on the Rhône or the Seine - so what? There is so much space and such deep water that the interaction is negligible. Meet a loaded 38m automoteur on a Freycinet waterway and you really do need to know what you are doing. If you slow right down or pull right over to the bank you have simply abdicated all responsibility for your craft, and you will be thrown about like an empty plastic bottle by the movement of water he sets up. You may even be sat on the bottom or swung out across the canal as he draws all the water from away under you. It is no use crying then and blaming him - you need to kick yourself in the bum and tell yourself how stupid you were, and that next time you will keep going at a moderate speed and stay as close to him as you can. It is bad manners to actually come into contact, but you will find that almost impossible anyway as the pressure from his bow wave will push you well clear. Aim to be close enough to shake hands with the batellier as you pass. Another bleat we've heard from now two different narrow boat owners is that they were "tipped". An expression we had not encountered before, but it was because each of them had tied tight to the bank using a line from the roof, and as a chargé went by and drew the water away from under them their boat heeled right over. They each of them blamed the chargé with no thought that it might be down to their own ignorance, or that they might be able to moor in a way that did not make that happen. All I can hope is that such people have such a bad time here that they quickly go back to the UK and annoy people there instead. Everyone starts from a position of knowing nothing, but some seem content to stay there. Edited to add:- Sorry Neil - we seem to have hijacked your thread, but there are possibly people reading it because they are thinking about coming with their boat to the continent, and I'm afraid that ignorance is not bliss after all. I suppose we should have taken it to the boat handling category instead.

I could not agree more. The CEVNI rules distinguish between large ("normal") vessels of 20m and over, and small craft under 20m, but make no distinction by function. They say a small craft must always give way to a normal vessel, and other than that it is first come first served at a lock. The rules do not use the concepts of pleasureboat and commercial one. However we always stress to our trainees, many of whom may fetch up with a boat of 20m+, that unless they are certain that they are efficient and will not hold a commercial up they should always give him precedence. Roy and Carole, British commercials boaters with Pedro, worked on the principal that they would let a cruiser by insofar as possible, but if he stopped for lunch or they passed him while he was still in bed next morning they would not give him a second chance. Certainly a chargé moves so much water you would never get by without his co-operation.

We've got a 6LW Gardner governed down to about 80HP (but these are Gardner horses, of course). We're very heavy - about 80dwt - and can't do more than about 12 kph on deep rivers or 8kph on a Freycinet canal. You're right, you don't often get to overtake even a chargé trente huit when he's out in deep water. On a Freycinet canal though it can be very painful sticking at 3-4kph behind one, catching up with him at each lock and waiting, with nowhere to tie to ... He's never going to let you by if he is within a couple of kilometers of the next lock, and quite reasonably so, but if we catch one before that we will generally call him up and pass. As a loaded boat has virtually no water under him or beside him in an empty lock he is very slow compared to us. We do know quite a few mariniers at least by sight now, and they are getting to know we don't bugger about and hold them up.

I don't think there are any plans to extend TRIWV to craft under 20m. When they came into being people were wetting their knickers over them, but the reality is that by and large they are sensible standards for a craft cruising continental watereways. The people most threatened are those who have little prior boating experience and who have perhaps bought a pretty little tjalk on their retirement which has served as a houseboat for many years and had all its bulkheads removed, its wiring a tangled mess of bodged handiwork, engine and fuel tanks a serious fire hazard - I could go on. I don't believe in over-regulation but it is difficult to argue against some minimal safety standards. Simplistically the UK BSS is concerned with the safety of the person in his boat, whereas the TRIWV is more concerned with making sure a vessel is a safe navigable entity - that the hull, engine, pumps, VHF etc are adequate for their purpose and in good working order. Groups such as the DBA have managed to get pleasurecraft exempted from most of the really stringent rules applicable to commercial vessels, though some do remain and are still under discussion. Jim wrote extensively about his continental cruising for the NBOC if I recall, and although he starts out saying how great it is and how much narrow boat owners would enjoy the experience, he does then go on to detail pretty well all the potential hazards that I list myself. He is also extremely well-travelled in his boat over a great many years, which is a very different matter to several postings on the topic I've seen on here. It is of note too that Falcon is held in the lock just loosely with the line in his hand - certainly not a technique you can use on the larger commercial waterways, and even the smaller Freycinet locks often fill at such a speed you would lose control of the boat if you did not take a turn with the line.

French-built canal pleasure craft are on the whole about as ugly and unhandy as you can get. However there is a style of grp boat built from the '80s on, originally (I think) for the Locoboat Plaisance hire fleet, and which are very roughly barge shaped and do handle very well. These were named Penichettes, and lock keepers do often now use it as a generic term for small barges, as you say. The batelliers (or 'mariniers', in the north) refer to their craft as automoteurs, or as Peter noted a "trente huit" (38). When we call them up, to ask if it's OK to pass perhaps, we will often call them as "chargé" or "vide", i.e. loaded or empty craft - not that you are ever likely to get past a vide!

It looks very clean and tidy where Phylis is. Also her boat is quite small and maybe less prone to sitting down on underwater debris. We lived on a Thames barge at Kew in the late 50s - just around the corner from the gut at Brentford - which did sit down on a 40 gallon drum once. It pushed a bottom board up so we could see the drum and river bed from inside the boat, but luckily went back into place once the tide came in and we took hardly any water at all. A very similar thing happened to another barge there, and that one did get rather wet inside. A modern steel narrow boat or cruiser would probably not be so forgiving if it sat on anything like that.

Registered ships work in that system - as a sole owner you own 64/64 shares, or two can own 32/64 shares each. Still gets screwed up once you have three owners though - it doesn't go into thirds. Duodecimal is better for that as it does halves, quarters etc, but also does do thirds. What it does not do is these silly 10th things that Napoleon so loved.