Tam & Di

Thanks for correcting my spelling of Badsey! Re butty cabins, we initially leased Bude from BW, but the first butty we owned was Bingley which had an extended cabin built by Roger Hatchard - a kitchen, as you say. Our sons were about 11 and 7 at the time, and having this extra 3' or so made an enormous improvement on living conditions without impinging too much on carrying capacity other than with very light cargoes. When we subsequently bought Bude from BW I had to rebuild the cabin on that and did the same thing. We regularly took on 52 tons of limejuice, and did get much the same a couple of times with coal at Gopsall on the Moira.

Obviously it is true that these are not "working" boats as there would be no reason to cloth them up when they were empty. But the main reason they get into trouble on a couple of occasions on the video is the lack of fluency; manœuvres are being carried out too slowly, probably because they are mob-handed and inexperienced. I wrote on another thread re how a lot of manœuvres work better at speed, and several of these shown here are cases in point. I guess my main sadness is that they are now "out there" with David Blagrove being a name people regard as an "expert", but do not give any sort of realistic picture of professional boating as it should be done. As suggested by another contributer it would have been much better to have got the boating right before it was filmed, or at least to make it clear these were very naïve trainees on board. BTW - Baddesey & Barnes showing how to do it? I don't recall Baddesey having a low cratch though. And has the butty steerer (who obviously does not have to steer as they are breasted) dropped the paddles as the gates are opened and gone on down to get the next lock?

There's certainly no reason why that should loosen the handrails it's a steady pull, not a sudden snatch at full revs. The rails where they adjoin at the centre are actually shaped specifically for use in that way as well.

I assume David was just roped in to instruct (only noticed the bad pun retrospectively, I swear!), and did not have anything to do with how the boats were set up. There are one or two oddities about it: * The mast lines appear to be tied to the top of the masts. They should just have a small eyesplice at the end which sits on the looby. When tension on the mast line is forward the looby comes to an upright position, and whoever puts the line on would ordinarily give it a slight pull to make that happen. If the line does then jam the looby swivels backwards allowing the line to pull off rather than pull the whole mast over. * The short line which goes from the butty's shackle to the dolly on the motor when breasted (visible in the still photo) would be left attached as the lock empties. When the lock is empty and the motor put into reverse to tow the gate open it will also pull the butty back which opens the butty gate as well. This line is then dropped off as the motor goes ahead to move out. Although it is not shown in the video clip it was obviously the person on the lockside who opened the butty's gate instead. * Both mast lines were too long, so there was far too much line hanging down when the half hitch was made. This would be bound to catch on something sooner or later. The lines also looked to be finished in back-splices (rather than being whipped) which means the ends were slightly bulbous - again a hazard should anything go wrong. In the demonstration that did happen, as the line almost jammed behind a rotten section of gate timber, and the person on the lockside had to free it. The whole point is there would not be anyone at the lockside in "the good old days" as if there was a spare person they would have gone on to get the next lock. * There seemed to be something on the topmast just behind one of the masts. Maybe I was seeing things, but certainly there should not be anything just lying around. * Although David did comment on having put the motor on the wrong side in the uphill lock I'm not sure why he did that. Possibly not used to that motor, though it must be very difficult to have to work with a second person on the stern anyway. Wouldn't this thread be better in "Boat Handling"?

Your interests say "good beer " and "MCFU" (Football of some kind?). Are you happy with beer that is just thrown together by someone with little discernment or do you prefer beer made by someone with good taste. Is it good enough for your team to knock a ball about willy-nilly or do you like a team who are keen and motivated to play well? I'm not sure I agree with the way Chris W expressed himself, but by any objective professional standards Ron's site is very crude and muddled. This was nobody's business while he was happy with it and it sold everything he had on offer. But he came onto the forum to say it was no longer doing this, and various people were offering what they thought was helpful advice. Why do so many topics quickly degenerate into mud slinging?

I use Mac G4 PowerBook with OSX.4 (i.e. I've not moved up to the new Intel processor) and it works fine with Firefox. The site does look very amateurish to me as well, but if it presents the image Ron wants to promote and has sold 80% of what he has to offer I guess that is the major factor. I did have trouble though working out quite what Ron does - sell holidays on craft/floating chalets of his own, or act as agent for others? If it does what Ron wants that is all it needs to do, but if he is concerned about not doing so well this year it may need more attention to detail.

To flesh it out........ Rivers are natural entities, and a bankside owner's boundary commonly extends to the centre of the river. Use of the bank may nevertheless be subject to control by the Navigation Authority for reasons such as flood control or navigation. Canals are man-made and each one had to have an Act of Parliament (an "enabling" Act) which gave the canal proprietors powers to make compulsory purchase of the land they needed to dig it. BW is this instance simply the successor of the original Canal Company. These enabling Acts almost all say within them that the freehold land owner whose land forms the eventual bank has various rights, including the right to 'make places for boats to moor or lie'. When the BW Act 1995 was going through Parliament it originally contained clauses to repeal all the original enabling Acts, but a small handful of individuals (including ourselves) made representation and had this taken out. So you can get hold of the enabling Act for the canal where you want to buy a piece of land and see what it has to say about riparian rights. HOWEVER ..... It does depend also on if BW owns a ransom strip - a small width of land - on the offside, as you would then be tied on their land anyway. AND ....... to make it more problematic there was at more or less the same time a court case where a group of moorers questioned BW's legal right to make a charge for a boat tied at the end of their garden. Unfortunately instead of arguing on "riparian rights" the basis of their claim was that they paid a licence which allowed them to cruise, and this covered them for the time they were tied up as well. The Magistrate found against them on the dubious legal basis that BW needed the money. It was only a very low level court decision, and Solicitor Nick Grazebrook who knew more about such matters than any other legal person at the time was firmly of the opinion that it could be appealed. Unfortunately neither the boat owners nor IWA had enough money to fund this, and the decision therefore stands as a precedent, albeit a fairly low-level one. Negotiations then led to the introduction of a reduced rate, and people have generally gone along with this rather than the expense and hassle of an appeal. Planning consent, as has been said, applies to change of use of the land, and in principle turning a bit of field into a garden on a mooring for a 100% proper cruising boat owned by someone with a house would still require this. Council Tax is levied on a 'dwelling' and would become payable; however you would only need a BW cruising licence, not a houseboat one.

Unless you are doing your own signwriting or have lots of money to pay for someone to do it (and a boat long enough to get it all in) short names with straight lines are good. How about "IT"? Makes stupid comment easy as well - "How long have you had IT?" for example

I've put an excerpt from John Hassel's Tour of the Grand Junction Canal in 1819 on the General Boating 'Not a barge' thread - he refers to use of the term monkey boat at that time.

As long as the river is appreciably wider than your boat so you're not likely to bend it like the sad photo I think you'll find that you'll still get round as quickly, but find yourself much further downstream than where you started. .. or rises, as the case may be!

John Hassel in his "Tour of the Grand Junction Canal in 1819" uses the terms "boats" and "barges" more or less at random, but does say "The commercial boats used in navigating the canal are long and narrow and admit of two entering a lock at the same time; an economic principal by which they save the double dues; for what reason I am withal unacquainted, but the country people in these parts (Linslade/Leighton Buzzard) call them monkey boats; the passage boats are much broader and have every accommodation for passengers, travelling usually at the rate of 30 miles a day. There is another description of boats called fly boats which are allowed to travel night and day on the Grand Junction Canal; these boats bring with them Manchester goods, and all articles which require particular care, and like the monkey boats, generally go in pairs to save lockage". He mentions also that the passage time of a lock is about seven minutes here near Linlade, but only three minutes once you get to (the smaller locks) Stoke Bruerne and Braunston.

It could be in the middle of the saloon under a perspex cover as a centre piece like the steam engines in various paddlesteamers that still ply for trade.

While a submarine MUST be referred to as a boat and not a ship (not that you find them on canals very often)

When we get absolute beginners on our barge handling courses I find it useful to tell them that although they are stood at the wheel and to that extent it is like a car, in reality boating/barging is more like riding a bike. You begin by over-steering and wobbling from side to side, and gradually get the feel of how to make small constant movements on the wheel/tiller rather than abrupt panicky big ones. We do frequently get people with narrowboat experience who say to me that they always coast into locks so if they hit anything they don't do any damage. They are surprised when I tell them they have uttered an impossible sentence - if you drift into locks it is not a matter of "if" you hit something but "when". You are only in control of your boat when it is in gear and moving at sufficient speed that any slight puff of wind or piddle of current will not have any effect. Yes, when you are learning you go slowly and steadily, but that should only be the first stage in acquiring fluency and not an end in itself. Learning any skill follows the path that initially you can only see one movement at a time, and then gradually you see two, three steps ahead, until finally you can say drive from London to Birmingham and not remember anything in particular about the journey; your brain only wakes up when something out of the ordinary happens which might need some action on your part. That's the time you can really enjoy your boating and look around you to take everything in. Yes too on getting to know your boat. Each one is different to each other one - even one big Northwich motor from another. Find somewhere you can go flat out, mentally mark something on the bank and when you reach it do an emergency stop. See how far it took you - how straight or otherwise was the boat when it stopped. If you do find somewhere wide enough see how tight a turning circle you need, clockwise and anti-clockwise. Nick's comment on experience with machinery in general is true too. It's probably a "man's thing" that they are more likely to have played with toys that involved similar ideas, as it tends to be mostly women that give me grief by slamming the single-lever control from hard ahead to hard astern without pause, or go into reverse to stop in a lock and leave it there without even noticing they are on their way back out again. After two or three locks where I gently say "I think it would be better if you went into neutral" I finally leave them to reverse out and work it out for themselves why the crew is looking at them with such a puzzled expression.

Something you had to eat last night? Wind emphatically pronounced as in "blowing a gale" rather than as in "winding with a key". The "winding with a key" pronunciation only appeared somewhere in the late 70s when lots of people were discovering canals and reading about them in magazines rather than learning how to go on at first hand from people who preceded them. There is also the term "cross-winded" for making a c*ck-up of getting into a lock, on the generous assumption that it could not be due to incompetence. Boating is mostly about making use of the elements as far as possible, and obviously wind and current are the major considerations, with weight and trim of boat and the effect of the propellor also playing a part. Jumping off and pulling the stern round with a line is all very well as long as you can guarantee being able to get back on at the appropriate time. More seriously though the ability to warp a boat - use of lines for turning or manoeuvring in general - seems another lost art. With motor boats we more often talked of swinging or chucking round. It was a sign of flash when coming into Brentford for a load to chuck round in one. Ideally you would be breasted with the butty on the inside of the turn so the pair would go round more tightly; the trouble with that though is that if you screwed up and had to hold back hard the butty kept on going briefly which stopped the turning moment dead. If you went round in the direction that had the butty on the outside at least if you had to chuck back the weight of the butty continued the turn for you. All this in front of a full audience of born-and-bred boatmen! Bow thruster? Is that bow as in what you do to the queen or what you shoot arrows with?

I think to signify a particular type of craft. Not really any different to Steilsteven - i.e. straight stemmed - defining and describing one particular style of Dutch freight boat when you come to think of it. Tom Rolt and contemporaneous writers Eric de Maré and Charles Hadfield all write it as two words, though de Maré uses capital letters (i.e. Narrow Boat) to imply the idea that he is writing of something distinct. Certainly when we worked narrow-boats (how about that as a cop out?) we were very snotty about people who referred to them as a barge, but it is true they come into any reasonable dictionary definition as such. It depends on what level you are talking. Among "those that know" people want to show off their knowledge and use terms like "josher", "Shroppie fly" and so on, whereas amongst our selves it was simply boat and butty. In simple terms it is enough to say canal boat, but sometimes it is useful to have the distinction between wide ones and narrow ones for instance. So narrowboat is useful to mean a 7' wide craft of the type originally used for freight on canals, as opposed to any old narrow boat such as perhaps a canoe.

Or what about a smelly smiley?

I remember Comet and Betelgeuse as owned by Tony Jones in the early 70s and may even have some slides if I ever get time to try to sort them. I know he had connection with Stroudwater Carriers but can't remember exactly what it was.

I'm intrigued that Ana thinks there are communities of people living on boats (which I would take to be at least three or four in a group) all of whom are self-sustainable eco-warriors, or all of whom are engaged (professionally?) in the performing arts. And that they would welcome being studied by an anthropologist. It smacks of the common social science trait of knowing the answer and setting the scene to prove it is right - trouble is that my reply only shows me stereotyping social scientists in the same manner I've accused her of doing to boat dwellers - can't win, can you. Did show there is not that much common ground among the Canal World community though, didn't it.

Quite so - I'd like to know as well. I suppose I would not use that hitch on a bollard to moor overnight as it is too easy for some lout to let it go. In fact though my line would be tied on the boat - I would have an eye on the bollard, possibly held tight with a cable tie if it were a dodgy area and assuming no-one else is on that bollard who would be trapped by my line. But what knot do you see as preferable? Being basically lazy by nature I'm always looking for the minimum of effort for the maximum of return, and the boatman's hitch certainly gives that.

I don't know if it is possible to slow the animation down on that site, but at the speed I was viewing it it looked very much as if the person tying it put a half hitch into it at the end. There was certainly something a bit odd there. Another of the advantages of that hitch is it can be made as easily with a line 100' long as 15' long. You never let go of the end of the line or tuck it under anything, as the photo I posted tries to indicate. If a half hitch is introduced at the end that would rather negate the simplicity of the hitch. It would introduce a possibility of it jamming and is quite unnecessary.

Actually, no. The "boatman's" hitch' is probably quicker than a clove hitch once your hands know how to do it rather than your brain, as it were.

I suspect knots and locks have been discussed to death already, but "search" did not come up with anything. This is a good basic technique for going uphill one handed. We ran the Leeds & Liverpool shortboat Farnworth as a tripboat from Uxbridge on the southern GU one handed (it was long before Health & Safety mantras, but don't let your children do this). Denham Deep is much too deep to be able to get off once you're in the lock. I would leave her in head gear and step off with a stern line as she came in and strap her to a halt on the big wooden strapping post just next to the bottom gates. I couldn't let her come up against the cill as water would be on the decks then. However the main reason for posting is to query the use of a clove hitch. A very useful knot for tying to a mooring stake - if the stake gets pulled out by a passing boat the stake is not lost. Other than that it is a liability. It can easily seize so tight the only way to get it off is to get the knife out, and so too if it is used in winter and the line freezes. The hitch invariably used by boatmen and Thames lightermen is far safer. It can be put on very quickly, and is simply an extension of strapping the boat to a halt. It won't slip, but can be "unfolded" even with extreme tension on the other end or when the line is frozen solid. The picture may give better explanation for those who don't use this hitch. (edited to say I've now found a discussion May 2005 in "Boat Handling" where it is referred to as a "tugman's hitch")

I've just been looking at some old topics and came across some discussion of the ex-GUCCC wideboat Progress. When we first moved from the river onto the canal it was with a lifeboat conversion at Cowley Peachey. We then discovered the 74' x 12'6" wideboat Progress lying sunk on the Cowley dredging tip at the Slough cut end. We bought it in 1961 and converted it for living, and in the 8-10 years we had it we cruised a couple of times to Birmingham (I have a photo of us pretending to come out of the narrow lock at Camp Hill), more frequently to Braunston, to Slough, on the Lee and the Stort to Hertford and Bishops Stortford, and well up the Thames. The main reason it was not successful for carrying was not simply the tunnels, where traffic coming the other way had to wait for Progress to come through, but all bridge holes as well. One maintenance nightmare now must be the bottom boards, given the difficulty getting elm. They are about 3' wide, and although the boat has a slightly rounded chine they are still about 10'6" long. We never had to replace any, though we did replank most of the waterline. We sold her in 1971 to fund the purchase of our first narrow boat Towcester and as we immediately started getting carrying work we shortly also bought the butty Bingley. I've appended a couple of photos. They're rubbishy, but perhaps of interest. Unfortunately photography was not my forte - also the great majority of stuff I took was on colour slide, which I've never got around to converting to digital images (assuming it is possible)